Kibbles & Bytes Blog

It’s your last week to sign up for Small Dog’s three training sessions at “*KnowledgeWave*”:http://www.knowledgewave.com in South Burlington, Vermont — ideal for businesses and IT professionals who have an interest in what iOS (mobile operating systems) and working on the Mac OS can do for you.

* *iOS (iPad/iPhone) For Business,* Tuesday, July 30, 9am-12pm
* *iOS (iPad/iPhone) Technical Training For IT Professionals,* Tuesday, July 30, 1pm-5pm
* *Mac OS X Technical Training For IT Professionals,* Tuesday, August 6, 9am-5pm

Why register? If your business is new to Mac or iOS, or if you’d like to maximize how ‘going mobile’ can improve your productivity, these business-centric trainings are ideal. You’ll learn how to seamlessly integrate Macs, iPads and iPhones into your business.

All classes are held at KnowledgeWave, 30 Community Dr. #5 South Burlington, VT 05403.

“*To learn more, and to register, click here.*”:http://www.smalldog.com/training/?utm_medium=email&utm_source=newsletter&utm_campaign=KB-kw

__*Note: Participants are encouraged to bring their own iPads and iPhones.__

In the days leading up the release of Apple’s Quarterly Financial statements this week, the analysts were all predicting that Apple would miss its own guidance for sales and profit. There was talk that the smartphone market was saturated, that Apple had lost marketshare, and a lot of prophets of doom for Apple.

Instead, Apple posts revenue of $35.3 billion and a net profit for the quarter of nearly $7 billion, or $7.47 per diluted share. While the profit numbers are down somewhat from the same quarter last year, keep in mind that the 3rd generation iPad was released last year in this quarter resulting in higher inventory levels (sales) at places like Small Dog Electronics. If you take that new iPad inventory into account, iPad sales were down about 3% year-over-year. With new models expected this fall, I can imagine this turning around.

Apple’s gross margin declined (as predicted) from 42.8% to 36.9%, which reflects the maturing nature of the product lines. Boy, I wish we had margins that were just a point or two more. Not many realize this, but we make less than 10% margin on most Apple products and once we pay a credit card fee, the margin is very thin. These strong margins helped Apple to generate another $7.8 billion in free cash flow to add to their stash of cash. Apple spent some of that stash, as promised, by returning $18.8 billion to shareholders through share buy-backs or dividends. Apple’s stock purchases were about $16 billion, which is enough to buy a number of companies outright, but Apple wisely decided their own company was the better buy!

Apple also saw some big increases in its iTunes, Software and Services businesses, with sales rising to $3.9 billion, which is 25% year over year growth. It is an interesting ecosystem with developers making over $11 billion in sales, half of which was within the last year. Here are some other interesting numbers from this sector:

* 1 billion TV Episodes downloaded
* 390 million movies downloaded
* 900 thousand Apps
* 900 billion iMessages
* 8 trillion push notifications

There were more hints of exciting products to come this fall. Tim Cook, Apple CEO said:

bq. “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. 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.”

Congratulations to Apple for another great quarter!

As a person who writes a fair amount for Small Dog, I use the Spelling and Grammar check on a daily basis. Often times, I write about products (among other things) that I know for a fact are spelled correctly, and yet Apple’s dictionary doesn’t know the word. Luckily for me, OS X has the ability to learn new words so they aren’t continually marked as incorrectly-spelled words.

However, what happens when you accidentally click the Learn button instead of Ignore? Up to this point, I had feared the word would be permanently spelled wrong for all eternity! I did some digging, and found a way to unlearn words from Apple’s dictionary.

If you want to unlearn words simply follow these steps:

* Navigate to *Library > Spelling*
__You can find the *Library* directory by holding down the *option* key while clicking on the *Go* menu in *Finder*__
* Open the file named *LocalDictionary* in Text Edit or your favorite text editor
* Delete the offending word or words from the list
* Save and close the document

__I can confirm this tip works with OS X Lion (10.7). I am not completely sure this will work in OS X Mountain Lion (10.8), but the process has been the same for many years now. While the Dictionary file name may change, the process is the same.__

_Dear Friends,_

I shouldn’t be surprised, but Vermont weather continues to amaze me. We went from a week-long heat wave with temperatures in the 90’s and super muggy conditions to temperatures that has us thinking about the fall. It was 33 degrees just across the lake over in Saranac, NY this morning, but the sun is out and the dry, cooler weather is nice. My blueberry plants have really liked the weather, though, and Grace has been picking a huge bowl of plump berries every day.

Our annual free eWaste Recycling Event is this Saturday at the Mall of NH in Manchester (our 4th one there). I’ll be riding my motorcycle over to help direct traffic and talk with customers as we collect electronic waste, and to make sure it is out of the waste stream and landfills. We will be holding another eWaste event in the fall in Rutland, VT, too.

I will go over Apple’s quarterly financial results below, but the numbers are simply mind boggling. In the three month period of April to June, Apple sold over 31 million iPhones, 3.8 million Macs and 14.6 million iPads. Those are some large numbers and that sales success translated to strong revenue and profits. We are seeing the same trend lines as the rest of the industry with more and more people finding that they can do their work best on iOS devices and finding that a Mac might not be necessary. This is not a new trend, and Apple has been talking about it for some time.

The good news is that there is still that “halo” effect where customers get introduced to Apple via iPod, iPad or iPhone, and come back to buy a Mac. Those closeout MacBook Airs we had last week sold out in record time so the demand for Macs is still strong.