Apple CEO, Tim Cook. Image source: WorldTVPC

Apple continues its impressive financial streak with another record-breaking fiscal quarter ending December 31, 2011. The Cupertino company posted a record quarterly revenue of $46.33 billion and record quarterly net profit of $13.06 billion ($13.87 per diluted share). This is almost double the results in the year-ago quarter. Gross margin increased from 38.5 percent in the year-ago quarter to 44.7 percent. International sales accounted for 58 percent of the quarter’s revenue. Apple generated over $17.5 billion in cash flow from operations.

iPhones continue to be a huge cash cow for Apple, selling over 37 million iPhones in the quarter, a 128 percent unit growth over the year-ago quarter. Apple also sold 15.43 million iPads, a 111 percent increase over the year-ago quarter. Apple isn’t only about smartphones and mobile devices, though. Macs, much contributed by sustained interest in the iMac, enjoyed a 26 percent unit increase. Sales of iPods may have dwindled 21 percent compared to the year-ago quarter, but this still meant Apple pushing 15.4 million of the portable media player to consumers.

With another impressive quarter at hand, Peter Openheimer, Apple’s CFO lamented, “Looking ahead to the second fiscal quarter of 2012, which will span 13 weeks, we expect revenue of about $32.5 billion and we expect diluted earnings per share of about $8.50.”

Apple’s momentum has also kicked Exxon as the world’s most valuable company, with a market capitalisation of $416.76B, beating the energy brand by $6 billion. The new King of Wallstreet (again) ploughs on!

In a market dominated by laptops, tablets and other mobile devices, Apple‘s iMac still accounts for nearly a third of 14.5 million all-in-one desktop computers sold in 2010. The iconic iMac, first unveiled in 1997, comprised close to 33 percent of the total all-in-one units sold in 2010 according to data by DisplaySearch and Bloomberg. This is an impressive number considering portable and mobile Mac products account for over 70 percent of Apple’s computer sales.

HP Omni27 All-in-One

It is predicted that sales of all-on-one devices will hit over 23 million units in 2014. Apple is currently ahead of the pack, with Lenovo and HP following closely behind. HP has unveiled the HP Omni27 All-in-One PC ahead of the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas.

CES this year is already seen as a smartphone and tablet domain.

Apple is expected to update its iMac line, powered by Intel‘s 22nm Ivy Bridge platform this year.

I had the opinion that the previous iMac Intel form-factor was the perfect example of beauty and practicality. Perfect almost. (except for the dreaded Mighty Mouse). So how do you, or can you top that? How do you perfect perfection? Well, what do you know? The hardworking Apple Design Team has done it again. Not ones to be satisfied (ever! and ‘Amen’ to that), they’ve taken perfection to yet another level (Win PC manufacturers eat this!).

Welcome the new iMac. All sexy in aluminium. With an ultra-thin profile and an even thinner ‘chiclet’ keyboard ala MacBook. Powered by Intel Core 2 Duo processors of up to 2.4Ghz (BTO option up to 2.8Ghz), the new iMacs convincingly supercedes the previous offering with style, power and bigger storage. Also, the beautiful 20″ and 24″ displays. Yum.

Never a better time to grab an iMac I think, although those who don’t mind the slightly older model, may be looking at some really good deals!

Toast Titanium 6 (the best CD-burner app on the planet?) kept bugging me with a “Medium Error”, just when it needs to do a “lead-out” to close the burning session. This is annoying. And I hate errors which really don’t tell you anything. Like a “Type 1″ error. Or a “Type 2″ error. What the fuck? How’s anyone supposed to know? Might as well just be “I’ve fucked up. It’s not my fault. It’s the system.”

My 1.8 Ghz G5 PowerMac in the office has been intermittently freezing on me. It’s not supposed to do that. It’s supposed to be uncrashable, thanks to its UNIX underpinnings. But, oh no, it has a mind of its own. It thinks it’s Windows of some sort. Hell, even the console startup is like DOS. (Well, at least there isn’t a “blue screen of death”).

I take care of it. I run maintenance scripts frequently. I do an “update_prebinding” to optimise the system. I delete and clear system + user cache. I verify and repair permissions. I do all that is possible to keep the system free of crap and running optimally.

What the heck’s going on?

And you know what’s funny? The G5 I have has a serious problem with Flash memory. Plug in any Flash-based peripherals and files get 100% corrupted. Without fail. And this has happened since upgrading to Panther (Mac OS X 10.3). Panther is quick and superb, but also introduced some nagging bugs with the update.

So, I thought – why not backup all your data then reformat the 120GB SATA drive and do a clean reinstall of the system? Shouldn’t take more than 2 weeks I reckon. But oh no…Toast just had to act up. Doesn’t want to burn a damn thing. Crap.

Don’t you hate it when things don’t work? The worst is when it doesn’t work and you don’t know why. Just spend your whole day figuring out through trial and error what could be causing these anomalies. Grrr… Maybe I should just format the damn thing, for the heck of it. Screw the data. Format and zero all data on the hard drive. Then leave the country.

Case closed.