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Apple Announces Q4 2013 Conference Call for October 28

Apple’s fourth quarter earnings report and conference call will take place on October 28th, 2013, according to an Investor Relations update on Apple’s website. At the time of the event, Apple will broadcast the call online.

Apple plans to conduct a conference call to discuss financial results of its fourth fiscal quarter on Monday, October 28, 2013 at 2:00 p.m. PT / 5:00 p.m. ET.

For the third quarter, ending on June 29th, Apple earned $35.3 billion in revenue, resulting in a net profit of $6.9 billion. Earnings for the 3rd quarter were $7.47 per diluted share. For the fourth fiscal quarter, Apple predicts earning between $34 billion and $37 billion in revenue (which Apple later clarified would be towards the high end following opening sales of the iPhone 5c and iPhone 5s). Last year, Apple earned $36 billion in revenue, pocketing $6.9 billion in profit, at $8.67 per diluted share.

This year, Apple launched two new iPhones: the colorful iPhone 5c, and the flagship iPhone 5s. During the opening weekend, Apple sold over 9 million new iPhones, compared to iPhone 5 in 2012 which sold over 5 million during its opening weekend. Launch countries included: Australia, Canada, China, France, Germany, Hong Kong, Japan, Puerto Rico, Singapore, the UK, and the US. In their press release, Apple stated that demand for the iPhone 5s exceeded initial supply and that many online orders would be shipped in coming weeks.

In addition to new iPhones, Apple introduced iOS 7, a complete rethinking of Apple’s mobile operating system. Through a simple software update, millions of customers had their iOS devices updated with brand new features such as Control Center, an all-in-one hub for managing common settings and playback controls, visual multitasking, and automatic updates that ensure apps are always current and up-to-date. You can read our thoughts on iOS 7 here.

Apple also added iTunes Radio to their content ecosystem, which features: first plays of upcoming albums, collaborations with artists, customized radio stations based on songs, and an ad-free listen for iTunes Match subscribers. iTunes Radio helps listeners discover a variety of new music based on their musical interests, favorite artists, and listening habits.

While Apple has not made any announcements, the company is expected to reveal new iPads and iPad minis later this month, launching the products in Q1 for 2014 to kick off the new fiscal year. If and how the company will update the iPod lineup remains to be seen, but my guess is that things will stay the same this year, since the iPod lineup received a Space Gray color option shortly after the iPhone 5s and iPhone 5c were announced. As for Mac updates, I could see Apple revealing a launch date for its Mac Pro at the iPad event, but I expect silent spec bumps for everything else.

We will provide live updates from the conference call on our site’s homepage on October 28th starting at 2 PM PT.

First Photos of Jony Ive-Designed Leica M Camera→

PetaPixel:

Admittedly, there’s only so much you can alter a Leica M, but now the company has finally released press images of the Ive-designed shooter, and as you might expect, it could be described as “unapologetically simple.”

Jokes aside, the camera basically looks like what you would expect an Apple-Leica hybrid might look like. The aluminum design is to be expected, but apparently it actually took some serious time to get right. According to Leica, the camera you see below is the result of 561 models and nearly 1000 prototype parts made over the course of an 85-day design marathon.

From Leica’s official Google+ account:

Leica Camera is pleased to present The Leica M for (RED), designed by Jony Ive and Marc Newson. The camera, based off the Leica M, will be auctioned off at Southeby’s on November 23rd 2013 to raise money for The Global Fund to fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria.

From a design standpoint, it features a laser machined aluminum body and an anodized aluminum outer shell. A total of 561 models and nearly 1000 prototype parts were made during the 85 days it took to create of this unique, one of a kind camera.

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Blur 2.0→

The new version of Blur, an app to create blurred wallpapers for iOS 7 that I mentioned a while ago, includes a new feature to generate a random wallpaper by tapping a button. What’s nice is that Blur loads random photos from Flickr, displaying a link to the original photo at the bottom of the screen. It’s a cool idea and it can generate interesting wallpapers that you wouldn’t be able to create off your own photos.

Blur is $0.99 on the App Store.

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Amount Conversions From Launch Center Pro

In September, I reviewed Amount, an elegant and easy to use unit converter for iPhone:

Amount is easy to use and ready for iOS 7 with a full-screen design and neat animations. It isn’t packed with advanced functionalities, but I’d definitely recommend it as a unit converter app for everyone.

Today, the app has been updated with a URL scheme that can be used to launch specific unit conversions from other apps. As documented by the developer, this is the URL scheme to use:

amount://convert?number=NUMBER&category=CATEGORY&unit=UNIT

The commands are rather self-explanatory: given a numeric input, a category (currency, length, data, etc), and a unit, you can launch Amount’s conversion screen with information already filled in for you. While you can set up this kind of shortcut with any app that lets you create URL scheme actions, the obvious implementation takes advantage of Launch Center Pro’s numeric keypad to simplify the process of typing numbers.

amount://convert?number=[prompt-num]&category=currency

With the action above, I can quickly type a numeric input in Launch Center Pro, tap launch, and then select the primary unit for a currency conversion in Amount, which will then display multiple results inline without switching screens. It’s a handy shortcut, and it doesn’t change Amount’s cool visualization of converted results.

Amount is available at $0.99 on the App Store.

PDFpen Scan+ [Sponsor]→

Our thanks to Smile for sponsoring MacStories this week with PDFpen Scan+.

Smile just released a new app in their PDFpen suite of PDF editing tools. PDFpen Scan+ lets you scan documents, articles, receipts, and more, using your iPhone or iPad camera.

PDFpen Scan+ performs OCR right on your device, with support for 16 languages. Once OCR has been performed, the text in the scanned document can be copied and pasted into another document or the PDF can be exported with searchable text included. You can also open your scans in PDFpen for iPad or PDFpen for iPhone for further editing or share them via Dropbox, Evernote and other services for seamless editing on your Mac.

PDFpen Scan+ is available on the App Store at the intro price of $4.99. Check out the video demo to see all the powerful features packed into this indispensable tool.

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Calendars 5.1 Improves Sync, Reminders Integration, URL Scheme

Last month, I reviewed Readdle’s Calendars 5 and noted how, in spite of getting many things right with event presentation and Reminders integration, the app had been released with some dubious choices for Reminders management, date settings, and task creation. In particular, I noted how the way Readdle supposedly “enhanced” Reminders with a Today list led to more confusion than actual benefits. I concluded that Calendars 5 was a great calendar and reminders client with dozens of nice features and a good set of views, but that needed a more streamlined implementation of Reminders and reliable sync. Read more

Capturing the Aura of the Scottish Highlands With the iPhone 5s→

With intense use (I’ve made about 4,000 pictures in the last four days) I’ve discovered that the iPhone 5S is a very capable camera. The color and exposures are amazingly good, the HDR exposure feature does a stunningly good job in touch situations, the panorama feature is nothing short of amazing—seeing a panorama sweeping across the screen in real time is just intoxicating. Best of all it shoots square pictures natively, a real plus for me since I wanted to shoot for Instagram posting.

This is photographer Jim Richardson, writing for the National Geographic. He continues:

What surprised me most was that the pictures did not look like compromises. They didn’t look like I was having to settle for second best because it was a mobile phone. They just looked good.

The pictures are indeed good, and Apple’s Phil Schiller seems to appreciate the article, too.

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Launch A Web Search In Safari From Other iOS Apps

In moving back to Safari as my main browser on every Apple device I own, I thought I should mention a hidden feature of Safari for iOS that I discovered a few months ago and that I remembered today thanks to a Twitter exchange between readers Jordan and Jerry.

On iOS, you can launch Safari directly in a web search page using this URL scheme:

x-web-search://?[query]

Where [query] is the text of your search query. Essentially, instead of having to launch Safari, tap the address bar, type your search query, and then tap Go, you can use an app like Drafts or Launch Center Pro to quickly type out your search query and send it to Safari, which will open a new tab for your search.

In Drafts (or any other app that lets you create custom URL scheme-based services like Launch Center Pro, Editorial, or Mr. Reader), simply create an action that sends the text you’ve typed to Safari’s web search. Here’s my action if you want to install it in your Drafts app.

The benefit of this search URL scheme is that it doesn’t care about the web search you prefer: it’ll continue to work based on the search provider that you pick in Settings > Safari, and, overall, it’s just a nice shortcut that lets you save a couple of taps every day.

As usual, make sure to percent-encode your query. If you use Drafts, the action above will do it for you.