Before last week ’s Macworld Expo keynote , I had the option of sitting in the VIP section . Why I was awarded with a VIP badge , I ’m not sure , as I am not of import , lease aloneveryimportant . Near as I can project , I ’ve been atMacworldlong enough without getting fired that someone somewhere count on I must hold some sort of sway or incriminating pictures or something . ( So add “ Macworldeditor ” to thelist of things that become more respectableif they last long enough . )
Anyhow , owing to several circumstances — my cosmopolitan irritation among the nobs and the swells , my predilection for put on shirt that make me take care like a member of Don Ho ’s backup orchestra instead of a productive member of society — I wreathe up foregoing the very important person seats to connect my fellow virtual - ink - stained wretches in the press section . It ’s a decision I ’ve regret ever since , and not just because the guy posture in front of me kept standing up during the keynote to take pictures at key import during Steve Jobs ’ presentation . ( What does the iPhone look like , you postulate ? Like some guy wire ’s monumental backside so far as I know . )
No , the reason I regret my seating choice is that the grumbling from the pressing corps began much from the moment Jobs reveal Apple TV and the iPhone , culminating in open groaning by the prison term John Mayer take the stage for a repeat keynote carrying into action . ( perchance the folk around me were expectingsomeone from Liverpoolinstead . Or maybe they ’ve heardYour Body is a Wonderland . Who knows ? )
On some grade , you may understand the foiling of the press : We just sat through a two - minute tonic that featured no literal merchant vessels product ? What the blaze are we supposed to compose about between now and June?But there seemed to be another electric current of discontentedness that reach out even some of the civilians in the bunch . The lack of Mac - specific product announcements — no hardware , no iLife , no iWork — couple with the going of “ computer ” from Apple ’s official name left some phratry beef that Apple is turning its back on its long - time Mac business in favor of glossy new fallal like iPods and iPhones and lord screw what else .
Apple provided a rebuttal of sorts in announcing its record - breaking $ 1 billion first - quarter profits Wednesday . Lost amid the eye - pop numbers — seriously,$1 billion in profit — were some interesting tidbits about just where all that money—$1 billion!—was come from .
Appleshipped 1.6 million background and laptopsfor the three months ended December 31 , a 28 - percent step-up over the same menses a year ago . For those of you scoring at home , that ’s yet another strong fourth part of Mac shipments follow the impressive results Apple posted in its fiscal fourth quarter . More notification , Mac sale accounted for $ 2.4 billion , or 34 percent , of Apple ’s $ 7.1 billion in quarterly sale . So if you think Apple is toy with thoughts of abandon its calculator business think again — it has a couple billion grounds not to .
The flip side of that is Apple has an adequate incentive to bet beyond its Mac occupation for more gross - producing opportunity . look at that the company shipped 21 million iPods in the first quarter , 50 percent more than last year and up a staggering 141 percent from the 8.7 million iPods it shipped in the fourth quarter of 2006 . This quarter ’s iPod haul describe for 48 percent of Apple ’s revenue the retiring three months .
In other words , a little more thanfive years after Apple first introduced the iPodto a astonishingly receptive world , the music gimmick generates intimately half of the caller ’s sale . Can you really fault Apple , then , for attend at fresh expanse like the iPhone and seeing the voltage for expanding its business even further ? A good for you , financially floaty Apple is a fertile Apple acrossallareas of its business concern , even the computers we all employ and admire . And if these first - quarter figures tell us anything , it ’s that the Mac business ai n’t exactly hurting , even as Apple explores Modern avenues of growth .
So if Steve Jobs wants to expend three - one-quarter of his keynote let the cat out of the bag about a phone that wo n’t be in anyone else ’s hand for another six months , I ’m prepared to give him some leeway . At present , the military man seems to cognize what he ’s doing . And if he takes the stagecoach for next year ’s Expo and announce that he ’s not there to talk about the Mac or the iPod or the iPhone but some new gizmo alternatively , well , then that will be all right , too .
I ’ll probably sit in the very important person section for that one , though .
