It’s easy to forget when PC market surveys get it all wrong. The facts are simply ignored, as follow-up stories pretend it never happened.

So early in October, both Gartner and IDC released surveys of global PC sales. According to IDC, Mac sales totaled 4,901,000, representing a mere 0.3% growth over last year. Gartner, however, reported Mac sales at 4,613,000, representing a decrease of 5.6%.

It was all part of a story that confirmed the gradual erosion of PC sales around the planet. Indeed, were it not for an alleged sales increase from HP, the overall market would have shrunk even further. Apple’s reported decrease was in the middle of the pack according to Gartner, as was its tiny increase in the IDC report.

Now I won’t cover all the manufacturers, except to state one obvious fact: The Apple numbers were wrong by a huge margin! Worse, this was typical for other analysts who also had broken crystal balls, but this is not atypical for Macs.

Actual sales, according to Apple, totaled 5.4 million, an increase of 10.2% over the year-ago quarter. This represents an 8% share of the global market, and includes countries where the Mac doesn’t count for a whole lot.

So just what is fueling the fact that Mac sales are, more or less, on fire?

During the conference call with financial analysts last week, Apple CFO Luca Maestri give a significant reason for the Mac’s “unexpected” success, “…we are also seeing great traction for Mac in the enterprise market, with all-time record customer purchases in fiscal year 2017.”

I omitted the first part of the statement deliberately. Maestri attributed growth largely to “great demand for MacBook Pro.” Yes, that controversial professional Mac notebook that has been attacked relentlessly by the critics for many reasons, including the Touch Bar. When they were released last year, they were backordered for a while, and the skeptics claimed that it was more about the delay in delivering a new model than real demand for the refresh.

Clearly that wasn’t so.

That takes us to a Computerworld article that, aside from IDC corporate spin about its Mac sales miss, appears to recognize where Apple has made big gains with the Mac platform. But don’t forget that this publication, and IDC, are both owned by the same company, IDG.

Traditionally, Macs and the enterprise essentially existed on different planets. While Macs did well in the consumer marketplace, when businesses bought them, they were usually consigned to duty by creatives. The rest of a company’s employees used PCs, because Macs were otherwise regarded as toys.

But Apple has, in recent years, made huge conquests in the world of business, and this may become an even more significant factor going forward.

That takes it to a feature article I wrote last month for our weekly newsletter. I mentioned the perennial rivalry between Apple and IBM that existed from the day the Mac was introduced in 1984. Dedicated Mac users could cite chapter and verse about their favorite computer’s ease of use, reliability and security. But PC users didn’t care, and when Microsoft delivered a version of Windows that was, well, good enough, it was perceived as the death knell for the Mac.

In fact, the “Mac is dead” mantra persisted for years, and, until Steve Jobs returned to the company he co-founded, it might have come true. But I won’t go over a history that many of you know full well.

In short: In 2014, Apple and IBM cut a deal to build custom mobile apps for iOS. Over time, Macs were offered to IBM employees in increasing numbers. After IBM had a chance to evaluate its Mac experience, they reported they cost $273 to $543 less than PCs in upkeep costs, despite the higher purchase price.

Yes, we were right all along. Sure, Macs can give trouble, and I used to get paid to help solve those problems before the Apple Store and the Genius Bar, with free support, essentially put me out of business. macOS updates sometimes ship with niggling bugs, and there have been hardware repair programs, extended warranties, to address serious defects.

But it’s still worse for PCs.

It also appears that Apple’s success with IBM is just the tip of the iceberg. In recent months, Apple has made deals to provide Macs, iPhones and iPads for such companies as Delta Air Lines, GE, and even Walmart.

You’ll also notice that recent versions of macOS will run on Macs at least seven years old, which means that businesses can keep them longer and be assured they will be fully supported with OS and critical security updates.

It’s true that consumers tend to hold onto their computers longer than they used to. While this is not an example of a scientific survey, many of the people I talk to regularly, consumers and even fellow tech reporters, keep their Macs a lot longer nowadays. This may be, in part, due to the fact that refreshes are usually less significant, but it’s also true that a Mac that’s a few years old can still run great with the newest macOS. Sure, maybe a few hardware features aren’t supported, but that’s usually not a serious impediment for most users.

So Apple has to rely more on new sales, rather than replacements, to help the Mac prosper. That they are succeeding makes it an even more significant development.

For the past few years, Apple has been regarded as essentially a one-product company, because more than half of its revenue is generated by the iPhone. The theory does that, if iPhone sales tank, or start to erode, the company is in deep trouble, very deep. The impression was only buttressed during the quarters where iPhone sales were, in fact, a little lower.

They have to diversify more, so they say.

But what about Apple’s other products and services? How long can this problem, if it is a problem, persist before Apple looks for other solutions to continue to shore up sales?

In the 1990s, after Steve Jobs took over as “iCEO,” he discontinued most products other than Macs and some software. So basically, until the iPod arrived in 2001, Apple was essentially a one product company. Of course, sales were but a fraction of what they are now, but that had to be something quite significant.

Now it’s quite clear that iPhone sales did grow during the September quarter, and the December quarter may be a blowout, assuming sufficient stocks of the iPhone X are available.

But are there any other products that might pick up more of the load if iPhone sales begin to fall again? According to one published report, one of those candidates is, believe it or not, the Mac.

Despite some questionable surveys from IDC and Gartner about flat or lower Mac sales, the reality was something else again. September quarter sales were 5.4 million, up 10% from last year. For the full fiscal year, Apple sold 19.3 million Macs.

For a couple of years or so, it appeared Apple was giving Macs short shrift. Product refreshes were slow, and what was going on with the Mac Pro anyway? That spring session with a handful of tech reporters was designed to shore up the Mac platform, with assurances that Apple finally got the memo. By June, most Macs received upgrades, including the MacBook Pro, somewhat unexpected considering last fall’s introduction of new models featuring the Touch Bar.

Reports of an iMac with pro features will be realized with a brand new model, dubbed iMac Pro, with a newly designed thermal system that is designed to support Intel Xeon CPUs with up to 18 cores, and up to 128GB of ECC RAM. A starting price of $4,999 would have seemed unheard of until now, even though a fully outfitted “conventional” iMac can become costly maxed out with extra RAM and the biggest SSD Apple offers.

In fact, I was able to boost the price of the regular iMac to $5,329 by checking all the hardware options, including the Mac Keyboard with Numeric Keypad. But without software, and I didn’t select a Magic Trackpad 2, because I don’t like them. One can always dream.

The iMac Pro is due to ship in December, and with the promise of a new modular Mac Pro next year, and hints that the Mac mini may be refreshed at long last, it’s clear Apple is devoting a fair amount of attention to the platform. This may mean, in the twilight of the PC era, steady sales improvements for a while.

A surprise? You bet.

Now one article focusing on Apple’s other businesses also points to Services, a product category that continues to soar. Services include the App Store, Apple Music, AppleCare, and even iCloud. Revenue hit $8.5 billion in the September quarter, more than the Mac by the way. This means that Apple is maximizing revenue from its customers who, once they buy an Apple gadget, are willing to pay for apps, streaming music and even movie rentals and sales from iTunes. It makes customers even more valuable to the company, since it’s more than just selling more gear.

One surprise appears to be the Apple Watch. It comes at a time when smartwatches and other so-called wearables haven’t done near as well for other companies.

Even the vaunted Fitbit hasn’t delivered major sales improvements. One highly-touted smartwatch maker, Pebble, which arrived before the Apple Watch, basically crashed and burned, as the company ended up liquidating its intellectual property to Fitbit for a pittance.

Google Android Wear? Samsung Galaxy Gear? They are barely afterthoughts. It almost seems as if the Apple Watch will find itself dominating its market in the same fashion as the iPod took over the digital music player category beginning in the early 2000s.

While Apple doesn’t break out Apple Watch unit sales — and the skeptics have insisted it may be a flash in the pain — sales reportedly improved by 50% in the last quarter. It means that even a few million became a few more million, and if the pace of growth continues, that could mean huge numbers in a few years.

Right now the Apple Watch remains essentially an iPhone accessory. But by adding an LTE radio, which allows it to perform additional functions as an independent gadget, Apple has opened up loads of new possibilities.

I wouldn’t even guess at its potential. Maybe it will never hit sales numbers comparable to the iPhone, but does that even matter?

Besides, there are no doubt a number of Apple products under development that we don’t even have a hint about and not just a self-driving platform.

All in all, the iPhone will become a less significant factor over time. How could it be otherwise? But that doesn’t mean Apple will be stranded without followups or successors.

So let’s just look at the conventional wisdom that prevailed ahead of Apple’s release, last week, of its financials for the quarter ending September 2017. As usual, industry and financial analysts delivered their estimates, but there were some assumptions that different pundits made in the weeks preceding the official announcements.

Take sales of the iPhone 8 and the iPhone 8 Plus. They are a little more expensive than their predecessors, and since a supposedly far better model was forthcoming, sales were said to be poor. Certainly there were few problems getting the configuration you wanted. Since these iPhones weren’t altogether different from their immediate predecessors in the iPhone 7 family, some people were no doubt happy to buy last year’s models and save money.

I should say that a sale is a sale, but let me continue.

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Let me get to the basics first: Apple’s fourth fiscal quarter financials were blowout by any reasonable estimate. Up until the announcement, it was believed by many that iPhone 8 sales weren’t so good. Reports that iPhone sales in China were up by a decent margin were taken seriously, however, but regarded as only temporary.

The assumption has been that people held off buying new iPhones until the iPhone X was due to arrive. With reports of various and sundry production delays, it was questionable whether there’d be enough supplies on hand to meet demand. It even seemed to be a self-fulfilling prophecy, what with shipping estimates slipping to five or six weeks minutes after preorders went live.

However, there are now reports that units are shipping ahead of estimates, and that shipping delays in some countries, including the U.S., have gone down to three or four weeks. So maybe things are getting better.

But lots of things were better than analysts expected.

Quarterly revenue climbed 12 precent, to $52.6 billion, a record for that quarter. Net income rose to $10.7 billion, or $2.07 a share, compared to $9 billion, or $1.67 a share, last year. Analysts estimated revenue at $50.8 billion. Beat the Street doesn’t begin to tell the story.

Despite skepticism about the success of the iPhone 8, Apple reported sales of 46.7 million units, up 2.6 percent from the year-ago quarter. Analysts expected sales to hit the 46.5 million mark. All this despite the pent-up demand for the iPhone X that couldn’t be filled until this quarter.

But that’s not all.

After many quarters of falling sales, the iPad may be on a roll. Sales hit 10.3 million units, up 11 percent from last year. This is the second straight quarter of rising iPad sales, no doubt influenced by the 10.5-inch iPad Pro, introduced at the June Worldwide Developers Conference. According to the NPD Group, the iPad had a 54% share of the tablet market in the U.S for that quarter.

Does that mean that iPad sales are destined to soar once again? Well, it’s a start, and perhaps the new multitasking features in iOS 11 are giving Apple’s tablet a new lease on life.

I was particularly interested in Mac sales, though, because two industry surveys didn’t come close to estimating the results accurately.

It begins with those published reports of falling sales, or, at best, a slight increase over last year. Gartner claimed that Apple sold 4.61 million Macs for the September quarter, a drop of 5.6%, a little more than the average for PC companies. IDC estimated sales of 4.9 million, an increase of just 0.3%.

The reality was something altogether different.

So Apple reported sales of 5.4 million Macs, representing an increase of 10% from the previous year. In its quarterly conference call with financial analysts, Apple said fiscal 2017 delivered the highest Mac revenue, ever, and September quarter sales were the best ever for Apple’s fourth fiscal quarter. Educational market sales reportedly grew by double digits compared to the year-ago quarter, despite the competition of cheap gear, such as Google Chromebooks.

Clearly Gartner and IDC, both of whom have undercounted Mac sales before, need to evaluate their survey methods, because they failed big time on these estimates. Then again, IDC once suggested that Windows Phone was destined to supplant the iPhone in the smartphone race.

The Apple Watch is also doing well, with unit sales up 50% for the third consecutive quarter. It’s reportedly the best selling smartwatch on Earth, but wouldn’t it be nice if Apple consented to deliver exact sales, as they do with other products? Despite the fact that Apple is required by law to deliver accurate numbers, the skeptics will assume there’s some measure of corporate spin around.

In fact, I see more and more of them on the hands of people who travel with me on my ride sharing gigs. I’m still happy with my $12.88 Walmart watch, though, which is now on its third battery. Maybe some day.

As far as the iPhone X is concerned, the positives come from CEO Tim Cook, who says that demand  is “very strong.” He also reported improved production, saying, “we’re really happy that we’re able to increase week by week by what we’re outputting, and we’re going to get as many of them as possible to customers as soon as possible.”

The fact that waiting times are dropping does indicate that production may actually begin to match demand by the end of the year, or shortly thereafter, meaning there will be reasonably plentiful supplies for the holidays. That appears to explain Apple’s optimistic guidance for the quarter, with estimated revenues between $84 billion and $87 billion, and gross margins between 38 and 38.5 percent. Thus it’ll be the company’s best quarter ever.

In other notes culled from the conference call, the highly profitable services business grew 40%, and Apple’s sales have doubled in India. The company’s cash hoard soared to $268 billion, an increase of $7.4 billon over the previous quarter.

Clearly Wall Street is impressed, with Apple’s stock reaching $173.38, an increase of $5.27, in after hours trading.