Apple was able to beat any expectations for the company’s fiscal fourth quarter. It was able to pull out a 46% profit jump.

The increase in profits was $1.82 per share or $1.67 billion total.

Analysts were expecting the company to have a gain of $1.42 per share earnings if there revenue would have been $9.2 billion, but the actual revenues came out and it was $9.87 billion.

Part of the reason for the high numbers was the increase in iPhone sales, which increased by 7% in the fourth quarter. It was able to sell 7.4 million units. It was also able to move 10.2 million iPods, which represented an 8% increase. In the way of computers, it sold 3.05 million Macs.

Steve Jobs had a statement,”We are thrilled to have sold mroe Macs and iPhones than in any previous quarter. We’ve got a very strong lineup for the holiday season and some really great new products in the pipeline for 2010.”

Hopefully one of those things in the pipeline for 2010 is the much rumored tablet. Many are expecting it to be a fully functional computer, but like an iPhone or iPod Touch. A tablet with the abilities of one of those would really change the game as far as computing is concerned. So far, touch screen computers haven’t taken off the way touch screen phones have; even though there are several companies out there who are putting a lot of development dollars into the touch screen technology for computers.

I am excited to see what Apple has coming out in the future because, even though other brands will be behind, it means that there is a new generation of computers and electronic gadgets coming out that can really (like I said in the previous paragraph) change things up. Watching advancements in technology is pretty exciting to me!

AT&T was highly criticized recently because of outages of not only data services but also voice services during the South by Southwest festival. The problem arose from the use of iPhones and other heavy-data usage devices. Everyone who has these devices are paying more for unlimited data and (usually) text message plans both of which are extremely profitable for the company.

AT&T had to bring in extra equipment to handle the issues with the network, however, with all the extra money the company is bringing in from the sales of the plans one would think that their network could handle the issues that are arising from heavy data usage?

Recently, I was using a friend’s iPhone and realized that, without WiFi and WITH 3G coverage, the internet was crawling. I needed her Facebook application for something, otherwise I would have just used my phone.

The way that the cell phone companies are battling this increase in usage is to start coming up with the 4G network. 3G networks are all being touted as the newest and fastest thing now, but these carriers are starting to come up with the 4G networks “of the future”. Sprint has already started to launch its 4G network. It has already launched in Atlanta and Baltimore. I feel bad for T-Mobile at times because most of its coverage still isn’t 3G and watching Sprint launch 4G just reminds me how slow T-Mobile is at getting its coverage ready.

With these heavy data usage phones, the networks have got to get it together. They really need to start catering to the users who are paying the premiums for the phones and data plans. The average iPhone user spends more than $100 per month on the plan, other users on AT&T spend half of that amount.

There’s something fishy going on with some iPods out there. Sure, I’ve talked about how some iPhone 3GS models are getting quite hot in the past, but they haven’t been exploding, which is exactly what happened to one girl in Liverpool in the United Kingdom.

In this case, all the girl and her dad wanted was a refund from Apple. However, Apple wouldn’t simply give them a refund for their explosive iPod Touch. Apple wanted the family to sign a settlement form. The form would have meant that they coudn’t talk about the incident or Apple could sue them. Apple could also sue them if they ever disclosed the terms of the settlement.

This isn’t the first time that Apple has tried to shut people up about problems with its devices either. Many other times, it has been able to get customers to sign the agreements when their iPhones and iPods overheated.

The whole incident sounds pretty scary when the dad describes what he did when the iPod started acting funny. He said, “It made a hissing noise, I could feel it getting hotter in my and, and I thought I could see vapor.” After throwing it out of his house he said, “within 30 seconds there was a pop, a big puff of smoke, and it went 10 feet into the air.”

When he contacted Apple, they sent him a letter that had a refund for the 162 pounds he paid for it, but with the money he agreed to the company’s denial of liability and that he will “agree to keep the terms of and existence of this settlement agreement completely confidential. Any breach of confidentiality may result in Apple seeking injunctive relief, damages, and legal costs against defaulting persons or parties.”

After the news came out, other people started coming out of the woodwork with people saying that their ipods had similar problems and some even burst into flames. Some iPods burned their owners. It appears as though the problem stems from the batteries that the devices use. The lithium ion batteries tend to overheat in iPods as well as laptops (remember when Dell issued that HUGE battery recall in 2006?).

I wouldn’t be too happy if my iPod exploded in my pocket. I usually keep my iPod in my car’s console because it stays hooked up to my radio and if it exploded in my car it would be a particularly bad situation for me (and I would make it a VERY serious issue with Apple).

Who could forget the classic iPod commercials? While it seems like a long time ago, it was just 5 years or so ago where you would see the shadowed people dancing against the colorful backgrounds. That was the beginning of the iPod trend.

Apple had come out with a new and revolutionary product that became the number one item on most wishlists. Now, just a few years later, it is looking like the reign of the iPod at the top of the portable music player is coming to an end.

At the time the iPod came out, many people bought them because it was so much easier than the bulky cd players and as more people got them, they became trendy to own. I actually still currently have the fourth generation iPod and it stays connected to the dock in my car (because having an iPod adapter in the car is just the norm at this point).

However, as time went on, more phones were able to do the same things that the iPod did and the iPod found itself trying to keep up with phones instead of the other way around. I can name a handful of things that the iPhone can do that the iPod can’t and you can buy a used iPhone on ebay and use a lot of the features without even having a cellular connection (at least that’s what I’ve been told). Many other cell phones are able to double as music players now too. While my iPod is connected to the car, i have been using Pandora on my cell phone instead at times.

In the future, Apple will likely focus more on the iTouch than the iPod as far as portable music players go. At the same time, it would be  nice to see some features that are on the iPhone that aren’t on the iPod touch. Things like a camera and a microphone would be nice. This seems to be easily implemented if Apple would just use the iPhone, but took out the cellular chipset. Then again, I don’t know too much about how chipsets are configured on the devices.

The good news is that Apple’s technology doesn’t seem to be losing demand and won’t be anytime in the near future thanks to the Macbooks and iPhones.

Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference left a lot to be desired with the announcement of the iPhone 3G S. Where everyone was expecting something “revolutionary,” they were left with something that was simply “evolutionary.”

The newest addition to iPhone lineup, the 3G S is simply the iPhone 3G with a 3 megapixel camera, a faster processor, and the 3.0 software. Data speeds for the 3G S have been increased to 7.2Mbps HSDPA. Apple also finally added video recording abilities to the iPhone and at 30 frames per second, they’re pretty good. It will also have multimedia messaging.

One of my favorite features is the new fingerprint resistant coating on the phones…I have always been angry at the amount of fingerprints my phone accumulates over the course of 5 minutes. Right now my Pre is a smudge magnet.

The price points were nice announcements, with the 16 GB version running $199 and the 32 GB at $299. They will also keep selling the iPhone 3G (the 3.0 software can be downloaded for free for these phones) at $99. That’s for a non-refurbished phone. I believe that the price points were set to put some pressure on Palm after setting the price of the Pre at $199 after a $100 mail in rebate. The new iPhones will be on sale starting June 19th.

Another announcement regarding the iPhone is the new ability to tether the phone to a computer for data usage. While at first At&t wasn’t announced as one of the carriers to allow tethering, later the company issued a statement saying that it would allow tethering.

One thing that happened at the conference today that was a bit annoying was their depiction of the number of apps the Apple App store has versus other companies. Sure, Apple has over 50,000 apps in the store, why would they compare it to Palm, who JUST launched its App Catalog on Saturday. They gave palm 2 days and all Palm has to offer at the time the presentation was made was 18 apps. Well, while browsing my App Catalog yesterday afternoon, I can tell you that there were 25 apps as of Monday night.

Aside from the iPhone, Apple also announced new Mac Books with non-removable batteries. While this goes along with every other offering from the company like iPods and iPhones, this is a bad idea in my opinion. It never takes long for a laptop to start losing overall battery life and everyone already knows how expensive it is to send an iPod to Apple for new batteries…imagine how much it will cost for a battery for a laptop! Plus, you will be without your laptop for however long it takes to get back to you.