Friday Afternoon News

<a href="http://www.mactalk.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2009/04/odd_jobs.jpg"><img class="imgright size-full wp-image-336" title="odd_jobs" src="http://www.mactalk.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2009/04/odd_jobs.jpg" alt="odd_jobs" width="250" height="217" /></a><a href="http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/04/22/economy-be-damned-apple-posts-its-best-second-quarter-earnings-ever/">Apple had a great Q2 this year</a>, in fact, it was their best Q2 ever. Apple has US$29 billion in cash. There was a 3% decline in Mac sales vs. last year though, mainly due to the overall educational market dropping severely. As usual, the "we know nothing" line was touted in the Q&amp;A.

On the other hand, Microsoft had their <a href="http://www.9to5mac.com/Microsoft-losing">first ever drop</a> in quarterly earnings since they started. Aww.

But Apple have <a href="http://news.cnet.com/8301-13579_3-10226486-37.html?part=rss&amp;tag=feed&amp;subj=News-Apple">sacked 1,600 dudes</a> from their retail stores around the world. Aww.



<a href="http://www.forbes.com/forbes/2009/0511/032-apple-steve-jobs-nobody-loves-me.html">Forbes got a copy of the deposition</a> Steve Jobs gave the SEC regarding the stock backdating scandle. Apparently Steve felt un-loved by the Apple board, so gave himself some backdated shares. Aww.

<a href="http://lifehacker.com/5222989/how-apple-co+founder-steve-wozniak-gets-things-done">Lifehacker talk to Woz</a> about his productivity methods.

There's a series of <a href="http://www.macworld.com/article/140113/2009/04/greenapple.html">3 articles on the US Macworld</a>, discussing Apple's environmental efforts and impact.

<a href="http://www.expandrive.com/mac">New version of Expandrive is out</a>, and it is great. If you hook up to SSH/SFTP/FTP servers often, check it out. It even supports Amazon S3 now!

<a href="http://i.gizmodo.com/5222717/can-the-ipod-shuffle-be-swallowed">Gizmodo got a professional sword swallower to swallow an iPod Shuffle.</a> There's video of course.

AT&amp;T are ready to counter the Palm Pre (which will be on the Sprint network), by giving their <a href="http://theappleblog.com/2009/04/22/apple-iphone-vs-palm-pre-att-employee-talking-points-leaked/">sales staff a list of talking points</a> they can use to persuade the customer to buy an iPhone instead of a Pre.

<a href="http://fingergaming.com/2009/04/metal-gear-solid-touch-gets-major-complete-version-upgrade/">Metal Gear Solid Touch has been bumped to version 2</a> - with Konami saying the improvements are that good, that it's now the game they wanted to release in the first place.