Author: dsellers

In a press conference regarding its latest quarterly financials, Apple Chief Financial Officer Peter Oppenheimer said Mac sales were up 20% in America alone, representing a 26% increase in revenue.

Apple sold 2.94 million Macs during the quarter, representing a 33% unit increase over the same quarter in 2009. Worldwide Mac sales were up 3%, increasing revenue by 49%. Asia Pacific was the biggest market; Macs sales there were up 67%, garnering a revenue increase of 184%.

On March 30, Seton Hill University in Greensburg, Pennsylvania announced that all students will receive a 13″ MacBook laptop and an iPad. Seton Hill is not the only university embracing the iPad: George Fox University in Newberg, Oregon will offer incoming freshmen a choice of a new MacBook or the iPad.

Last fall, Princeton University conducted a pilot program, giving Amazon Kindles to 50 students. Early feedback indicated that many “were dissatisfied and uncomfortable with the devices.”

Prosoft Engineering (http://www.prosoftengineering.com) has announced Drive Genius 3. Improvements have been made to speed and overall performance as well as new features like DrivePulse, Enhanced Defrag, RAID Support, Enhanced Repartition and Email Notifications, says Greg Brewer, CEO of Prosoft Engineering.

Drive Genius 3 is a native 64-bit application that takes advantage of Mac OS X 10.6 (“Snow Leopard”). It costs US$99 for a personal license. Users of earlier versions can upgrade at a discount.

Ca-ching! Apple has announced financial results for its fiscal 2010 second quarter that ended March 27, 2010. The company posted revenue of US$13.50 billion and net quarterly profit of $3.07 billion, or $3.33 per diluted share.

These results compare to revenue of $9.08 billion and net quarterly profit of $1.62 billion, or $1.79 per diluted share, in the year-ago quarter. Gross margin was 41.7 percent, up from 39.9 % in the year-ago quarter. International sales accounted for 58% of the quarter’s revenue.

There are rumors that Apple and AMD execs are talking about the former using the chips of the latter in upcoming products. Rob Enderle, principal analyst with the Enderle Group, even thinks there’s a slim chance that something more could be in the works.

Even though there’s a team within Intel is dedicated solely to Apple, if Apple did decide to switch, however, the AMD microprocessors might be more suitable for Apple since the chips favor graphics over central processing units, he told “MacNewsWorld” (http://www.macnewsworld.com/rsstory/69816.html?wlc=1271794909).