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Reuters reports that Apple is announcing iPhone sales figures of 270,000 for the second calendar quarter. Now the question is why don't AT&T and Apple's numbers agree? [Update from conference call: Apple does seem to be blaming it on activation problems. So 46% of iPhones had activation problems lasting longer than 30 hours? Wow.]

Also, another great quarter overall with record Mac sales and iPod sales up 21% year-over-year.

The Macalope eagerly awaits the first silly pundit to point out -- again! -- the dire news that iPod sales were down for the second consecutive … Read more

Apple seems to be doing pretty well these days.

For its fiscal third quarter, the company reported profits of 92 cents a share after the close of the stock market Wednesday, 9 cents higher than Wall Street was expecting and 26 cents better than the company's own projections. And the magic number? Apple reported selling what appears to be 270,000 iPhones during the two days before the quarter ended on June 30.

UPDATE 2:14 P.M. PDT: Apple CFO Peter Oppenheimer has confirmed 270,000 iPhones were sold in those two days.

Revenue for the quarter was $… Read more

Michael Gartenberg asks Is the iPhone a success or a flop?

The launch of the iPhone was the first move in what is likely to be a long game for Apple, trying to gauge the overall success based on two days of incomplete data is silly.

Gartenberg doesn't even mention the fact that the iPhone launch was plauged with activation problems. Needless to say, the Macalope is bullish on the iPhone. We'll see what this afternoon's quarterly conference call brings.

[Disclaimer: the Macalope holds an inconsequential number of Apple shares.]

If you're the type to monitor Apple sites for any sign of a rumor or news story, this will probably be old news. But for those of you who don't mind waiting to hear the news from another source, it looks like Quanta -- a prominent Taiwanese cell phone manufacturer -- has scored the right to manufacture the next version of the iPhone. Wow. Now that's some interesting news isn't it? Uh, sure.

Why in the world do people care when Apple signs a contract with a manufacturing company? I think it's one of the … Read more

I got my hands on XtremeMac's latest in-car iPhone power adapter, the InCharge Auto. As luck would have it, CNET car tech writer Kevin Massy loaned me his trusty desktop car lighter power supply to see if the adapter was worth its salt.

The result? It works! In fact, the adapter's standard USB connection will likely work on other USB-chargeable products as well.

For just $20, this seems like a good solution for charging you iPhone between destinations.

There aren't many, but one of the downsides of the digital revolution is noise pollution. The proliferation of gadgetry in our society has given rise to a constant cacophony of beeps, rings, buzzes and Beyonce ringtones. On any given day, the sound of our own phones is enough to push us over the brink, which is why we usually keep them on vibrate. But even a vibrating phone can sound like a buzz saw when it's bouncing around on a wooden desktop.

Here's one possible solution that could work equally well in a deafening office where a … Read more

One of the most useful things the iPhone does is find Wi-Fi networks in the area. This is something any device with Wi-Fi connectivity can do, but finding a Web connection with an iPhone in hand is a bit easier than driving around a neighborhood with a laptop in search of a strong signal.

This also happens to one of the most revealing and amusing features of the iPhone.

Sure, many network names are as mundane as "linksys," 2WIRE252" and "homenetwork." In San Francisco, you find a lot of service set identifiers such as "… Read more

Counting iPhones is harder than it looks, at least from the outside.

Coming off iPhone Weekend, the numbers game flew through the air as financial analysts tried to guess how many iPhones were sold by Apple and AT&T on June 29 and June 30, the last two days of the second quarter. Estimates ranged from 200,000 to 700,000 for the whole weekend, which is why AT&T's report of 146,000 iPhone activations on Tuesday was quite the buzzkill heading into Apple's earnings Wednesday. Apple's stock closed down $8.81, or 6.… Read more

I asked a friend today (we'll call him "Bryce Roberts" to protect his identity) about his experience with the iPhone. He was a heavy Blackberry user before, so I wanted to find out how the transition was going. He said:

It's actually given me a healthier relationship with email (and my family). Because it's so hard to type on this thing, I spend a lot less time with the device.

How's that for a technology coup? Sexy enough that people want to use it, but unusable enough that they don't. I'm actually … Read more