Mac opinion. Punditry. Whatever.

Apple’s latest financial results call was an interesting one on several fronts. Indeed, I think it may be looked upon years from now as a milestone in the company’s history.

Why? Mainly, because it marks a clear point in time where the company stopped being a computer company and started being a consumer device maker. As Steve Jobs pointed out in a recent keynote, Apple is a company that stands on a three-legged stool. Macs — computers — are obviously one leg; iPods are the second; and now, iPhones make up the third leg of that stool. The analogy is an apt one. Apple’s not a computer company that makes iPods and iPhones as a side business: the three-legs more or less equally support the company. As Apple reported, iPhones made up 39% of Apple’s business (using the non-GAAP figures — we’ll get into that in a minute.) That’s an astonishing statistic. In just 15 months, the iPhone has become the biggest single contributor to Apple’s bottom line, with lots of room to grow. iPods account for 31% and Macs themselves make up the smallest portion of revenue at 30%.

A brief word on GAAP
A lot of Apple-watchers are getting a quick lesson in economics over the company’s decision to use GAAP (Generally Accepted Accounting Principles) and book the revenue generated from its iPhones (and Apple TV’s) using a subscription method. That means that rather than booking the entire revenue generated from a sale in the period in which the sale was made, Apple spreads out the value of the sale over 24 months. In its interpretation of the rules, Apple believes that method allows it to provide free software updates over the course of those two years, rather than having to set a value for them. That’s why iPod touch owners have to pay for the updates that iPhone owners get for free. The company doesn’t make more of less money using either method; it just gets counted differently. So, if the revenue generated by iPhone and Apple TV sales did not have to get spread over two years, Apple’s results would be even higher. That’s why the company also reported what its results would be under non-GAAP accounting. As Jobs said in the call, the iPhone story was “too big for Apple management or investors to ignore.”

So, adjusting for non-GAAP reporting, take a look at Apple’s performance in the fourth quarter over the past three years.

Fourth Quarter Revenue (non-GAAP)

• 2006: $4.84 billion
• 2007: $6.22 billion
• 2008: $11.68 billion

The growth is stunning and illustrates a truly transformation period in the company’s history.

Wither the Mac?
I think this is wonderful news for that first leg of the stool, the Macintosh. It gives Apple a lot more breathing room than if it remained primarily a computer company. The diversity brought by the iPod and iPhone is insulating. It means Apple does not have to have a huge hit with every computer product. It means it has the luxury of being innovative, of spending money on R&D (Forget not, either, that the company has no debt and cash on hand of $25 billion — an increase of almost $10 billion since just last year.) And let’s not forget that much of the innovation on the other two legs of the stool begins or is to some extent reliant on what Apple does to the Mac. It’s a symbiotic product mix that I think Apple views in a holistic way, so I don’t see the Mac going away any time soon.

A few other notes
Steve Jobs couldn’t resist delivering the news in person that Apple outsold BlackBerry maker RIM in this quarter, and that by revenue, Apple is now the third-largest mobile phone seller in the world — again, in just 15 months in the market.

Rumor mongers will point to the fact that Jobs was on the call as some sort of sign regarding his health. The truth is that Steve does occasionally take part in these calls — though not often. I think he was there primarily to crow about the success of the iPhone and the fact that the 10 million unit goal for 2008 was reached two months early; and to talk to analysts about the uncertainty of the economy over the next period and its potential impact on Apple.

I’ll be on a MacJury podcast panel later this week to talk more about the conference call and other Apple matters. Visit the MacJury webpage or check back here for a link when the show is posted.

At first glance, it seems like another typical Mac tempest in a teacup — a “helpless indie developer being ridden roughshod by the big bad monolithic control freak Apple.” Like Macworld media blacklisting and the Proteron LiteSwitch and Konfabulator incidents before it, it’s a cause celebre that unifies the Mac web, but makes them look petty and childish once the sobering light of scrutiny is shone upon it.

[The rest of this article appears on The Mac Observer/iPodObserver. Please click here to read it. --Ed.]

In what may be the most pretentiously titled session yet, I joined a great panel of Mac and technology pundits for the latest installment of Chuck Joiner’s MacJury podcast. We discussed Apple’s financials for a bit, then launched into our thoughts on what should be next on the feature list of the iPhone. (Voice dialing was a unanimous choice.)

Please forgive some of the choppiness of the audio — we had Skype issues throughout the taping, none of which were helped by the fact that I was connecting from a Boy Scout camp in rural Pennsylvania.

It was a lively and typically fun session. I think the MacJury has found its voice with its lighthearted tone and the occasional joke interspersed with the punditry. This session’s panel was a pleasure to be with, and along with host Chuck Joiner, included Jeff Gamet, Galen Gruman and Terry White.

I use a VoIP service from AT&T called CallVantage for my home phone. One of the services features is that it sends voicemail as a .wav attachment to my email address. Unfortunately, my iPhone could never play the type of .wav the service creates, meaning I could see that I had a voice message, but I couldn’t listen to it. (Yes, I could dial in to my voicemail, but I can never remember how.)

Last night, I discovered that the iPhone 2.0 update fixed the issue and the files play perfectly. My short list of missing iPhone features is getting shorter and shorter (and yes — cut-and-paste is still number one.)

MobileMe customers are getting a note from Apple regarding the shaky transition to MobileMe services. As an apology for the transition trouble, the company is extending all MobileMe subscriptions by one month. I love the straightforwardness of this line, the second sentence in the letter: “Unfortunately, it was a lot rockier than we expected.” The ability to just plain admit there were problems is very refreshing, even from Apple.

Microsoft would never be so direct.

After finally getting my iPhone re-activated (thanks to the free WiFi at the Livingston, NJ public library), I spent much of yesterday examining the new features of iPhone 2.0 and happily downloading apps from the App Store.

The new iPhone OS is impressive, full of wonderfully polished touches and new features. One that I didn’t know was coming was the ability to take a screenshot (hat tip to Jason Snell): just press the Home and Power buttons simultaneously, and an image of the current screen is added to your Photo Roll, ready to email, sync or be sent to a web gallery — or added as wallpaper, if it’s not your phone and you’re in the mood for a prank.

The availability of iPhone applications makes my 1st Gen iPhone feel like a brand new device. I don’t think I was mentally prepared for the difference the additional functionality would make in how I regard the phone. There’s a subtle but profound shift in seeing the iPhone as an essentially closed ecosystem versus the boundless potential it has through third-party apps. The mind can’t help but think of new possibilities that no longer seem remote, but rather inevitable. It brought me back to the early days of the Palm PDA, when you could find an app for almost any function you could imagine. Thank goodness iTunes lets you manage which apps are synced to the phone — app management is sure to be the next “First World Problem” for iPhone owners.

Speaking of apps, the quality of applications available already ranges from incredible to appalling, and for that reason alone, I’m glad third-party apps weren’t available when the iPhone first launched. It was much better to build a baseline for expectations around quality, battery life and stability.

I’m fairly confident that the market will shake a lot of the crappy developers out of the space over the next few months, but right now, there’s a lot of chaff mixed in with the wheat, and a lot of developers who are not familiar enough with the Mac market. Lousy UIs, cheesey implementations and overpriced one-trick ponies abound, but are already getting hammered by bad reviews. Pricing, too, should stabilize, but there’s a lot of naivety on both the developer and user sides. It will be interesting to see what the market settles on as a “fair” price for most iPhone apps.

Some of my favorite apps so far:

• Pandora
• Cro-Mag Rally
• WeatherBug
• Remote
• TapTap
• Twitterific (although it seems to crash my entire phone every fourth or fifth launch)
• French Phrase Book (other languages are available, too)
• MobileNews
• BoxOffice

My battery life is certainly suffering, but it’s too early to tell if it’s the result of all the new apps, or the increased amount of time I’m using my phone because of them.

Oh, and if someone would create a WordPress admin app along the lines of TypePad, I’d really appreciate it.

I was too busy patting myself on the back for realizing I could update my iPhone’s firmware from my company Mac (rather than my home machine, where the iPhone is “registered,”) that I completely missed the possibility that my corporate firewall might block access to the Apple servers necessary to re-activate the phone. (It did.)

Until I get the situation rectified, I am the proud owner of an emergency-use-only phone that tastefully advertises itself as such in at least five languages.

Notruf, everybody!

It’s starting out as a day of fits and starts for Apple’s new mobile computing-related releases. The company’s Mac.com service went down last night, as scheduled and it’s replacement, MobileMe, has poked its virtual head up a few times, but was not up as of this writing.

In the meantime, a new version of iTunes has been released through Apple’s Software Update mechanism. The update mainly provides access to Apple’s new Apps Store, through which it will sell applications for the iPhone and iPod Touch.

Speaking of which, the iPhone 2.0 firmware update is not yet appearing within iTunes, but an observant MacRumors reader apparently found the software’s URL by scouring XML files. To apply the patch, you must hold down the Option key when pressing the Check for Update button within iTunes. Some readers are reporting what they consider long restore times, but so far the update seems to be working for iPhone users. The update for iPod Touch devices is a paid upgrade and apparently not part of this software.

For those willing to take their chances, the patch can be found at http://appldnld.apple.com.edgesuite.net/conte
nt.info.apple.com/iPhone/061-4955.20080710.bg
t53/iPhone1,2_2.0_5A347_Restore.ipsw

If your download appends a “.zip” extension to the file, simply remove it — don’t unzip the package.

In a post for TUAW, Erica Sadun focuses mostly on the unlocking prospects of the iPhone 3G, but comes to the same conclusion I did.

“The 3G iPhone that goes on sale Friday, represents nothing more than last year’s iPhone–that finally got delivered a year late.”

Shawn King also nails it in a post on Twitter: “I think 3G is for those who don’t already own one. Next model for those of us who own the original.”

Amen to both.

Spot on analysis by Macworld’s Peter Cohen about what’s likely to happen to iPhone developers who think just putting their software on the iApps store will magically make everyone flock to it.