I know Wall Street dwells on negatives these days, particularly because of economic troubles in the U.S. Indeed, Apple’s stock tanked in after-hours trading after its quarterly financials were released Tuesday afternoon. But there are an awful lot of good things to talk about, even if investors don’t see it that way.

First and foremost, some 2,319,000 Macs were sold, a record number. Indeed, this is one huge increase over last year, with the numbers coming in at 44% unit growth and 47% revenue growth. What’s more, the iMac showed surprising strength, so it wasn’t all note-books. In saying that Apple reports that sales for the MacBook Air “are very strong.”

In fact, Apple’s total sales for the quarter totaled $9.6 billion, or $1.76 per diluted share, which represents a 58% increase over last year. It’s also a record for Apple, but maybe analysts got so overwrought in their projections that Apple couldn’t possibly meet their expectations however the figures turned out.

Now we all know iPhones are moving at a great clip, with 2,315,000 million recorded over the period. What I’m wondering, though, is how this hot-selling gadget is impacting the iPod, since Apple sold 22,121,000 of them the last quarter. That was an increase of a mere five percent over the year ago quarter, although revenue growth came in at 17%, meaning that the higher priced models were preferred.

So what does this all mean? Has the iPod’s stellar growth ceased for good, or is this just a temporary aberration? Since Apple sits way at the top of the heap in this market space, is it possible sales of all digital music players have reached the saturation point? Maybe it’s true the great majority of people who want these gadgets have already purchased them, and now the iPhone will come into its own as the iPod’s ultimate successor.

During its conference call with financial analysts, Apple did its best to put a positive spin on what seems to be somewhat negative news. The iPod touch, for example, has come to be regarded as “a mainstream Wi-Fi mobile platform.” That takes it way beyond playing music and videos, which is why the newest versions will incorporate Mail, Google Maps and widgets. So you have a pocket-sized wireless computing device that will differ from the iPhone only in its lack of telephone features.

But is that just market speak, or does it somehow represent the future direction of the iPod in relation to the iPhone? Certainly adding more capabilities to this device would seem to make sense, if it can be done affordably and in a way that sells product.

Then again, isn’t that what the analysts were suggesting a few years ago, that music players would largely fade away and that mobile phones with music playback features would ultimately take over? I mean, why would someone want to carry two pocket-sized gadgets of this sort, when one can do it all? At least, that was the argument the tech pundits have frequently voiced.

Of course, the previous efforts, such as the LG Chocolate touted by Verizon Wireless, have been pathetic. They end up being bad music players and mediocre phones. When Apple delivered the iPhone, they turned the entire market upside down. Now we have some imitators, but Apple has set a possible future trend. And if you don’t want to pay extra for an integrated phone, there’s always the iPod touch.

So just how do you rate iPod sales from a realistic standpoint? Do you merge the results for the iPhone, since it incorporates an iPod? Would that make Wall Street happy?

Or are they just so jaded by the state of the economy that there’s nothing Apple could possibly do to keep its stock price out of the toilet, at least for now. It is possible, of course, that Apple’s lower-than-expected guidance for the current quarter — with expected sales of $6.8 billion and earnings of 94 cents per share — was the straw that broke the camel’s back. You see that was also below the Street’s estimates.

I guess it might take another quarter to see how it all shakes out, and allow the financial community to come back down to earth. It’ll also be interesting to see how this new Wi-Fi mobile platform fares in the marketplace, particularly if Apple adds some additional configurations to the iPod touch line.

Despite claims that Leopard may have been a disaster in the making, perhaps as tragic as Windows Vista, the early chatter about persistent bugs and massive dissatisfaction appears to be mostly wrong.

According to Steve Jobs, during last week’s Macworld Expo keynote, some five million copies have been sold since Leopard’s release in late October, and nearly 20% of the Mac OS X user base has upgraded. Customer satisfaction ratings are also extremely favorable. That’s quite an accomplishment, and it augers well for Leopard’s ongoing success.

However, that doesn’t mean that 10.5 and the quick 10.5.1 update are necessarily perfect. There are still troubling deficiencies that some of you are reporting, and, worse, features that could have made Leopard even better, but never got the green light.

One of the remaining issues affects wireless access. Since that’s become a major component of the Mac user experience, particularly with the impending release of the Macbook Air, Apple needs to nail down the most significant remaining defects and cure them as soon as possible. There are rumors that a massive 10.5.2 update is in the wings that will address a host of Leopard irritants and maybe even repair some failed features, such as Stacks. How it plays out, of course, won’t be known until that update is out, and I assume one must be coming, for that’s how it always is with the Mac OS. But when it comes to unreleased software, even if we accept the rumors are all or even partly correct, things can change before it ships.

Some of you are also reporting crashes and other anomalous behavior. Again, I feel that the presence of third-party software might be all or partly responsible. As it is, software companies are still rolling out their Leopard-compatible updates and not everything is perfect yet, although my experience has been really good so far.

Except for Microsoft Office 2008. It has gotten mostly rave reviews from the tech press, and I’ve been impressed with it up to a point. I’m concerned, though, that I don’t see complaints about Word’s excessively slow launch times. Yes, I know the new Office apparently runs less efficiently on a PowerPC-based Mac, for reasons that make little sense since Microsoft had so much time to work on it. But even on an Intel-based Mac, I am not happy to see the splash screen persist for up to 20 seconds before a document opens. That’s not good. Is it an Office thing, a Leopard thing? I don’t pretend to know, if Microsoft is even partly responsible, I would hope they are hard at work to address the most significant performance shortcomings and other oddities.

Moving directly on to Leopard, in deliveirng over 300 new or upgraded features, a few things remain broken. The Finder’s case of position and size amnesia has yet to be solved, although it surely runs noticeably faster, particularly when multiple operations are active.

I remain unsure about how well the Back to My Mac feature is going to function. Using .Mac, you are supposedly able to screen share your Mac remotely, but it’s not always so successful, particularly with third-party routers. At a client’s home office, where he has a Linksys router, I wasn’t even able to see my desktop Mac in the list of available shares with the original 10.5 release. Come 10.5.1, and that Mac’s icon would appear, but I still couldn’t connect. Will a 10.5.2 or subsequent release take care of this shortcoming, or are various routers, despite supporting the same protocols, just too different to allow them to be fully compatible with this feature?

Some of the issues with Leopard are cosmetic. Why, for example, should the text in the Help menu be smaller than the other menus? As someone once said in a TV show, “Where’s the logic in that?” Besides, didn’t Apple revise Leopard’s interface to eliminate inconsistencies?

When it comes to Time Machine, the lack of wireless backups has become controversial with the promise of Time Capsule, which is basically an AirPort Extreme with a built-in hard drive. Why should it work with that product and not with the ones you hook up to the regular AirPort base station? Is Apple so greedy that they’d deliberately disable an important Leopard feature?

Not really. I am inclined to think Apple just didn’t have the feature ready in time for Leopard’s initial release. When Time Capsule arrives, there will be an update that resolve this problem, so you won’t need that new gadget for it to function.

As to other Leopard, issues, I am not, so disturbed with semi-transparent menus and the 3D Dock. If the former bugs you, just try a different desktop wallpaper option and see if that delivers something more tolerable. But that and the Dock can be easily changed courtesy of one of those system modification utilities that are so prevalent, such as TinkerTool, so I don’t consider the issue to be terribly serious. Certainly it’s not a deal-breaker to have a little eye candy around to intrude on a dull existence.

So am I saying Leopard isn’t successful because of these lingering issues? Not by a long shot. Go ahead and read what people think about Vista, and you’ll see what unsuccessful really means.

In theory, respectable newspapers devote a small amount of space to correct errors. When it’s an online news outlet, posts can be easily modified, and, when appropriate, the nature of the correction would be highlighted or explained in an addendum to the post.Unfortunately, there are far too many members of the press these days who, out of laziness, a blatant disregard for facts or for reasons unknown, choose to repeat the same falsehoods over and over again. You can correct them day and night, and it will make no difference.

Once they write the words the first time, they become immutable. They cannot be changed, ever, and to hell with the facts.

Now I have written rants from time to time about the unfair coverage Apple often gets from certain elements of the media. But I don’t want to take the paranoid point of view, that the press is out to get Apple and/or Steve Jobs. It’s just that some have certain agendas that may simply stem from a desire to get higher circulations or hint counts. They might even regard a few paragraphs of pithy, if totally incorrect, comments as having some sort of entertainment value. One of the worst offenders in the entertainment arena is John Dvorak, and he’s not entertaining — at least to me.

Sure, you might get a few yucks from a clever turn of phrase, but tech journalism isn’t akin to writing for a sitcom, or maybe some of these writers produce movie and TV scripts part time. Being out of work for now, till the Writer’s Guild strike is settled, they forgot how to separate facts from fiction.

Well, I’m not entirely serious about that, but I do have my suspicions from time to time. At least Apple is no longer the beleaguered company, although I still think some pundits who gave up that catch phrase are still tempted to invoke it again at the slightest inkling that something Apple is doing isn’t entirely successful.

Story continued in this week’s Tech Night Owl Newsletter.

One of the biggest dangers of the pre-Expo feeding frenzy that surrounds Apple Inc. more and more these days is that it’s nearly impossible for the company to fulfill the financial community’s hopes and dreams.

No matter what the company does, some people way just say it’s just not enough. Now last year was an exception, because, with the unveiling of the iPhone, Apple introduced a whole new platform, or at least new for the company. The looks and interface were striking enough to impress both analysts and regular folk alike, and that contributed to the unexpectedly high sales figures out of the starting gate and throughout the rest of the year.

Sure, there are a few less truthful tech writers who claimed that Apple cut the price by some $200 because sales hadn’t met internal expectations, but that’s clearly untrue since the magic one million sales figure was reached just a few days later. And those alleged journalists still haven’t apologized for their gross misstatements, which is quite typical.

Already there are claims that Apple may not have met expectations for Mac sales during the December quarter, although preliminary reports indicate they are up 30% over last year. That, may I remind you, is way ahead of the industry average.

I suppose they want Apple to always walk on water, and if they end up taking a boat instead, something is wrong in Cupertino and the stock market price must tank appropriately.

Now it’s perfectly true that the shaky state of the U.S. economy, partly the result of problems with sub-prime mortgages and insanely high oil prices, is enough to cause the bear market. So perhaps the drop in Apple’s stock price from its historic high of $200 was to be expected regardless of the outcome of the Steve Jobs keynote. There was, perhaps, little Apple could do to pop up its stock price.

Of course next week, when they reveal their actual quarterly financials, you may see the stock reverberate appropriately, depending on the nature of the information. Apple had an optimistic guidance, and Wall Street has added to the figures, so it may be a blowout quarter regardless. How much of a blowout is anyone’s guess, and only Apple knows for sure right now. If it’s perceived as not quite enough, well, the stock price will remain stagnant or renew a downward trend.

Or maybe it’ll just happen for no reason at all.

In fairness to Apple, too much romanticism and expectation is invested in the company. If every single new product isn’t an absolute home run, well, they are losing their mojo. At least that’s the theory.

However, it’s a theory seems absurd on its face. Whether the products are perceived as classy or dull isn’t as important as how they actually sell. Certainly the Cube was thought of as something trend-setting because of its unusual shape and carefully delineated molded plastics. But it was overpriced and sales were mediocre.

It’s not that Steve Jobs won’t admit when a product isn’t succeeding. Take the Apple TV, which had a tepid reception in 2007. He got his crew to reinvigorate the gadget with new software and the ability to mate with a TV and let you buy and rent movies and music without the need of a PC. To drive the point home, they are making the new features available as a free update for existing users and also cut the price by $70.

Then again, most anything Apple produces can be controversial. The iPhone was faulted because there was no initial support for third-party software, a status quo that’ll be remedied next month. Now the MacBook Air is being faulted because it has a sealed battery, limited peripheral ports and no internal optical drive, let alone Ethernet.

The question that should be asked about Apple’s thin and light note-book, however, is whether it’s suited to the market for which it is designed, and that’s probably the committed road warrior, plus folks who just want to make a fashion statement. A product of this sort requires certain design tradeoffs. By providing external support for an optical drive and wired networking, Apple is allowing you to have it both ways but still have something that’s slim and light.

The real concern, though, is whether such a thin design is breakable in the field. After all, note-book computers are guaranteed a rough life. How will the delicate-looking MacBook Air sustain daily use and abuse. I have no idea, but it doesn’t hurt to buy an extended warranty with any note-book.

Personally, I think that Wall Street ought to be pleased that Apple is moving along nicely, thank you. What do you readers think?