Wall Street analysts must go back to the drawing boards after Apple reported two blowout quarters in a row so far this year. With total revenue of $89.6 billion for the most recent quarter, you’d almost think they had, by mistake, released the numbers for a holiday quarter. But no, this was correct. It was 54% higher than last year, with earnings of $1.40 per diluted share.

Most important is that Apple’s “failing” products all had significant growth. That includes the iPhone and even the “old fashioned” Mac. So maybe Apple wasn’t so crazy switching to Apple Silicon and ditching Intel. Or maybe most Mac users don’t concern themselves with the niceties of parts selection and such and are more concerned with having a computer that, well mostly, just works.

In passing, I go with the latter. While I don’t have any polls at hand, I rather suspect that the vast majority of Mac users wouldn’t know what sort of processor their machine has. Well, perhaps the numbers will be higher for the M1 Macs, since Apple has made such a huge deal in promoting them.

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Note: It’s been a while since I’ve posted, but not to worry. I haven’t given up on this site or this newsletter. But it’s also true that not a lot of things have happened with Apple other than hauling in record amounts of cash and selling iPhones at a greater rate than the analysts expected.

Well, there is, of course, those “Spring Loaded” products Apple introduced on April 20th. But an iPad Pro isn’t on my shopping list; never has been. I gave up on Apple TV with the acquisition of a VIZIO SmartCast set some years back; the Apple TV app and AirPlay 2 are supported. So my third-generation Apple TV stays unused.

But when it comes to iMacs, I have 24 years experience with them, and therein lies a tale.

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Many of you have read various and sundry predictions from both tech and mainstream pundits who profess to know something about the Apple and its plans for this year. It reached a crescendo, as you might expect, when the end of 2020 approached. But I wonder just how much thought was involved in putting these ideas together. A lot of it was just plain common sense, or what passes for common sense in this broken world of ours.

So you read about what the 2021 iPhone 13 might be like, and it was about a similar product with a few more features, perhaps a better camera and maybe even a tinier notch. One story, citing rumors from the Apple supply chain, a common source of real or imagined rumors, has it that the rear camera bump might also be smaller.

Now in the scheme of things, the camera bump is the most awkward design factor, or would be if you decided to use your iPhone — or similarly equipped Android device — without a case. But since I always have a bumper case, it’s no matter to me. I have managed to avoid most instances of damage as a result.

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If you’ve used Macs for a long time, say over 25 years, you might recall the original processor migration. Then it was the journey from Motorola 680×0 chips to the PowerPC, said to be the ultimate processor. But it wasn’t such a friendly change.

For one thing, just about every app you used, even those from Apple, hadn’t made the trip to the new processor. So they had to run in emulation. So they’d run, more or less, about the same as Macs using the 68030 CPU, such as the IIci or the IIx. If you were upgrading from a Quadra, for example, using the 68040 CPU, you lost the performance advantage till the apps were updated.

Now if you weren’t using Macs way back then — or weren’t even around — no worries. Most of this should be pretty clear anyway. Apple as “vintage” for several years), and a Late 2014 iMac (which has just been declared “vintage”).

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