By Alex Brooks Apple today announced financial results for its third fiscal quarter of 2013 which ran from January April 1, 2013 until June 30. Apple posted revenue of $35.3 billion and net quarterly profit of $6.9 billion, or $7.47 per diluted share. These results compare to revenue of $35 billion and net profit of $8.8 billion, or $9.32 per diluted share, in the year-ago quarter.
Gross margin was 36.9 percent compared to 42.8 percent in the year-ago quarter. International sales accounted for 57 percent of the quarter’s revenue.
Gross margin continues to be the number that many analysts watch closely as it continues to fall quarter to quarter. Primary reasons for this drop include the tighter margins on the iPad mini and heightened sales of cheaper iPhone models. To see this trend in action the key indicator is the changing average sales price of Apple’s top products. The iPhone’s ASP has dropped from $613 in the year-ago quarter to $581, the iPad has dropped from $515 to $436.
Apple reported the following number of shipments for its products during the quarter:
31.2 million iPhones compared to 26 million in the year-ago-quarter
14.6 million iPads compared to 17 million in the year-ago-quarter
3.8 million Macs compared to 4 million in the year-ago quarter
4.5 million iPods compared to 6.7 million in the year-ago quarter.

“We are especially proud of our record June quarter iPhone sales of over 31 million and the strong growth in revenue from iTunes, Software and Services,” said Tim Cook, Apple’s CEO. “We are really excited about the upcoming releases of iOS 7 and OS X Mavericks, and we are laser-focused and working hard on some amazing new products that we will introduce in the fall and across 2014.”
“We generated $7.8 billion in cash flow from operations during the quarter and are pleased to have returned $18.8 billion in cash to shareholders through dividends and share repurchases,” said Peter Oppenheimer, Apple’s CFO.
Apple provided the following guidance for its fiscal 2013 fourth quarter:
revenue between $34 billion and $37 billion
gross margin between 36 percent and 37 percent
operating expenses between $3.9 billion and $3.95 billion
other income/(expense) of $200 million
tax rate of 26.5%

Source: World of Apple

ReadKit (http://www.readkitapp.com) is an RSS reader that synchronizes with multiple RSS services. It supports sending articles to read-later services such as Instapaper, Readability and Pocket. However, out of the box there is no way to send an article to Safari’s Reading List (aside from manually copy-and-pasting the URL into Safari).

Reading List (RL) is very handy if you have multiple iOS devices, since articles in RL are automatically synchronized and downloaded on each devices. Below, I will describe a simple service that import the currently selected article in ReadKit into RL.

Open Automator and create a new Service. Call the Service “Add to Reading List”

Select Service receives: “no input”

Click on the next drop-down box, select “Other…” and find ReadKit in the Applications folder

On the left-hand side sidebar, select “Utilities” and then double-click the action “Run AppleScript”

Copy and paste the c …

Source: Mac OSX Hints

My friend Frank works for Canon in Manhattan, and occasionally gives demos in a room with locked-down iPads. Sometimes those iPads need to be rebooted—but Frank has no access to the sleep/wake switch ostensibly required to power off an iPad.

In the past, I’ve suggested that Frank “reset” something (under Settings -> General -> Reset) that’s easy to set again; resetting Location & Privacy settings doesn’t mess too much up, and it restarts the iPad when you tap it.

But there’s a better way. Also in the Settings app, head to General -> Accessibility, and and turn on Assistive Touch. That adds a draggable dot control to your screen, meant for people with physical challenges that prevent them from triggering certain iOS actions the traditional way. Tap the dot, then tap Device, and finally tap and hold Lock Screen—a software equivalent of the sleep/wake button. After a few moments, the familiar Slide to Power Off message appears, and you can shut the iPad down.
…

Source: Mac OSX Hints

Google’s recent update for the Maps app introduced a variety of new features and improvements. One of those is the ability to save map data for offline access.

If you use Google Maps on a Wi-Fi only iPad, or if you’ll be traveling somewhere where cellular data is spotty, knowing how to enable offline caching of map data is pretty important. CNet explained the trick recently.
First, you’ll need to zoom in a bit; you can’t cache a widely-zoomed-out map view. Then, when you’re at the spot you’d like to cache, type OK maps into the search box, and then tap Search.
When you do that, a Google Maps icon will appear briefly, followed by a message indicating that your map data was saved. Now, even when you’r …

Source: Mac OSX Hints

Long ago, we detailed a (rather scary) way to delete files without needing a stop in the trash can. A recent thread on StackExchange brought the issue up again, and some folks there provided other, less scary approaches.

Why would you want to delete a file without needing to choose Empty Trash? Here’s one example: You have some files in the Trash on your Mac that you’re not ready to pull the trigger on forever. Now you connect a USB drive and have files on it that you wish to dispose of. If you drag those files to the Trash, you have to select Empty Trash to do it—which means deleting the files from both the drive and your Mac itself.

Most Hints readers know about the rm Terminal command, which lets you remove files instantly and without a trip to the Trash. Bu …

Source: Mac OSX Hints

If you create an application bundle to start a Java application as a regular Mac app, you will get a message that the application is damaged when you try to run it on Mac OS Mountain Lion with GateKeeper active.
The error is caused by the fact that the Java stub application is signed by Apple, and Apple’s signature will not be valid for your application.The codesign tool will give the following message:

codesign -d MyJavaApplication.app
MyJavaApplication.app: invalid signature (code or signature have been modified)

The best solution is to sign your application with your Apple Developer key, but if you do not have one you can still sign your application with an ad-hoc key, and replace the Apple signature that will cause this message. To do so run codesign with the following options:

codesign -s – –force MyJavaApplication.app

The user will still have to allow running the application the first time by using the right-click (Co …

Source: Mac OSX Hints

Perhaps you use Safari’s Reading List feature to save various Web articles for later reading. But maybe your Reading List is so overwhelming that you’d prefer to export a simple list of URLs to keep track of—or to open in an app besides Safari.

Over at StackExchange, Rob Mathers offers up a quick Python script to do just that. Copy Mathers’s Python script into a plain text document, and name it something like readinglist.py. Next, make it executable; you can use the Terminal command chmod +x readinglist.py.

Run the script—which loops through the proper section of the ~/Library/Safari/Bookmarks.plist file where those URLs are stored—and it will generate a list of the URLs in question. If you’d like to save the URLs to a file, use a command like ./readinglist.py > urls.txt to do so.

Source: Mac OSX Hints

Sometimes, an old hint is so good, it bears repeating. Years ago, we shared a hint involving the Recent Items section of the Apple menu.

Next time you’re looking at that particular section, hold down the Command key. The names of your recent apps and files—which you could otherwise select to launch as desired—will change. For example, if your Recent Apps list included Acorn, that item would change to Show Acorn in Finder. And yes, this works with documents, too.

So if you very quickly want to find specific files in the Finder that you know you used recently, the Apple menu’s Recent Items section, in tandem with the Command key, can help you out in a jiffy.

Source: Mac OSX Hints

Since OS X 10.6, when you’re screen sharing and looking at a remote Mac’s screen, you cannot successfully use Command-Tab to switch out of a screen sharing window, because the command is sent to the remote machine instead.

I recently found a way around this by using Quicksilver. With Quicksilver installed, the key combination is not sent to the remote machine, but rather to your local Mac instead—once you’ve summoned Quicksilver. When the Quicksilver window shows up, focus goes to local machine, and Command-Tab is also sent to the local machine.

Lex adds: And that’s just the tip of the iceberg. In his testing, my colleague Dan Moren found the same behavior works with Alfred; he could trigger Alfred’s shortcut while screen sharing, and the app would launch on his local Mac, and thus Command-Tab would begin working on the local Mac instead.

I’m a LaunchBar guy, though, and when I tried to trigger LaunchBar on my Mac—which I’ve set to use …

Source: Mac OSX Hints

This hint is an oldie but a goodie, and we could only find it mentioned in comments on older hints. If you don’t know it, you’ll want to; if you already knew it, pay it forward to Mac users who are spending too much time fussing with the mouse.

The Apple menu sits at the top left of your menu bar, and the Notification Center icon sits at the top right. For years, though, OS X has made clicking menu items in either position simpler than it might appear. You needn’t move the mouse cursor to precisely the slim confines of either icon when you want to click on them. If you slam your mouse all the way to the top left corner of the screen, well beyond the perimeter of the Apple icon, and click—you’ll still successfully trigger the Apple menu.

The same trick works with the Notification Center menu at the upper right: Move the mouse all the way to that corner, fretting not about whether your cursor is actually atop the icon, and your click will still register as desired. …

Source: Mac OSX Hints