It’s nice to see Mac sales consistently besting 1.5 million units every quarter nowadays, and there’s talk that the magic two million figure may be reached as early as the current quarter. This sounds like a lot, and it is as far as Macs are concerned. But sales of a couple of million computers are dwarfed by the likes of Dell and HP, which traditionally record sales in the tens of millions.

On the other hand, the Mac OS is apt to appear in lots of unexpected places, and, before long, Apple’s operating system market share may actually be higher on products other than its personal computers. Of course, some of those products might, in a sense, be personal computers too, but I’ll avoid that labeling for now at least. That may change over time.

First there’s Apple TV, which is basically a slimmed down Mac with a slimmed down operating system designed to funnel your multimedia stuff from Mac or PC to TV. Of course, the iPhone also uses what Apple calls “OS X” to avoid the Mac link, although the guts are derived from the same parent.

So, assuming 270,000 iPhones sold during that magic 30-hour period last month, Mac OS sales did indeed exceed two million during the last quarter, and that doesn’t count the Apple TV.

Can you see where I’m going?

Consider the prospects for the next iPod, which some are referring to as a possible major upgrade, a so-called 6G model. Supposedly it’ll leverage Apple’s touch screen, and, of course, employ a version of OS X that doesn’t include support for telephony and Internet connectivity. In other words, half an iPhone, more or less, with the usual options for Flash memory and miniature hard drives.

There are some who suggest that elements of Mac OS X are already present in the more recent versions of the iPod, but Apple isn’t talking. No surprises there.

Between now and the end of the year, Apple could sell more than ten times as many iPods as Macs, plus a million or so iPhones, or even more. By 2009, industry analysts are speaking of iPhone sales that might resemble what the iPod is doing today.

Every single iPhone and most iPods will add to OS X’s market penetration, with or without the word “Mac.” So where would you place the operating system’s market share then?

Now it’s quite true that Apple isn’t the only tech company leveraging operating systems across several platforms. Microsoft has Windows Mobile for smart phones, and various flavors of Linux grace other wireless phones.

Indeed, your cable or satellite TV set top box is basically just another specialized personal computer with its own operating system. The famous TiVO digital recorder, for example, uses Linux to power its world-class interface, the very interface that gave it a win in the courts in that action against Dish Network. Although the courts haven’t resolved that skirmish yet, TiVO’s software will soon turn up for some Comcast and Cox cable TV customers.

It doesn’t take much of a stretch to imagine some future version of Apple TV incorporating all the functions of a TV set top box, which would, in effect, pit Apple against TiVO. And to think some tech pundits once suggested that Apple would do well to acquire TiVO because of its stellar software. Sure, right.

So what does this incredible expansion of Mac OS X’s market share going to mean to you and me? Frankly, not a whole lot. But for Apple, it’s a wonderful achievement, because it shows off their ability to take the very same technology and deploy it among a number of products that you might regard as only peripherally related.

As Apple grows, it means there will be a lot more R&D money with which to improve Mac OS X and fund other Apple product categories. In fact, there are probably an unimaginable number of gadgets that this operating system could run. Anything that requires a microprocessor, a storage device, and some form of networking would be ideal.

I’ll leave it to you to envision the possibilities, as I’m sure Apple is doing right now.

By nearly any estimate, Apple is doing extremely well these days. For the fiscal quarter ending June 30th, for example, they beat the street once again, reporting record earnings of $5.41 billion, with a net profit of $818 million or $.92 per diluted share.

In contrast, last year’s quarterly results totaled $4.37 billion, with a quarterly profit of $472 million or $.54 per diluted share, and that was considered pretty good at the time.

In all, some 1,764,000 Macs were shipped, representing an improvement of 33% over last year, and more than 150,000 higher than any previous quarter. Clearly lots of people are buying Macs these days. Of these, 634,000 desktops were sold, compared to 529,000 last year. Note-book sales amounted to a whopping 1,130,000, compared to 798,000 last year. This amounts to 64% of all Macs. Alas, Apple long ago stopped breaking down sales by specific models in each category, but it’s clear that desktops are still moving at a pretty good clip, despite the speedier growth in portable computers.

Moreover, despite predictions that iPod sales would be flat, Apple reported moving 9,815,000 of them during the quarter, a 21% increase over last year.

Oh well, you should never take Wall Street estimates seriously, nor even some tech pundits who look for bad news at the back of everything that comes from Apple, even if it’s meant to be positive.

Take the iPhone. As I said yesterday, the report that only 146,000 units were activated by AT&T during the first 30 hours the product was on sale caused Apple’s stock to nosedive. Despite that, Steve Jobs says that the “iPhone is off to a great start — we help to sell our one-millionth iPhone by the end of the first full quarter of sales — and our new product pipeline is very strong.”

Indeed, during the conference call with analysts, Apple CFO Peter Oppenheimer revealed that 270,000 iPhones were sold during those 30 hours, although the actual figures state “”iPhones and Apple-branded and third-party iPhone accessories.” Regardless of how this actually breaks down, it does seem more in line with what analysts were estimating before they got carried away and the numbers flew off the map. Apple COO Tim Cook repeated an earlier AT&T report, that they sold more iPhones during that critical weekend than any other wireless phone during any full month.

In addition, the initial problems activating those iPhones have supposedly been resolved, and those difficulties may be why iPhone activation figures were considerably less than expected. What’s even more interesting as that Apple claims they saw no evidence of “cannibalization” of iPod sales because of the arrival of the iPhone. So I suppose another theory voiced by some naysayers now bites the dust.

Now as the Wall Street trading day came to a close, Apple’s stock had even begun to recover an anticipation of positive results. But that won’t stop investors from freaking out at the merest suggestion of bad news in the future.

If you want to to get the raw, unvarnished figures, you can just check Apple’s site and decide for yourself.

There were a few more revelations during the course of Apple’s meeting with financial analysts, although some critical comments were held to the vest, as usual. The Apple retail store chain, now 185 strong, for example, delivered 33 percent year-over-year growth for the quarter, and more than 50% of new Mac sales went to customers who were new to the platform. Not answered, of course, is how Apple got those figures, unless they poll a random sampling of buyers.

So if anyone has actually purchase da new Mac from one of Apple’s own retailers, let us know if you were asked either at the store or when registering the product if you were an existing Mac user. I’m just curious, since Apple has been delivering switcher numbers in that range for several years now.

On another retail front, Cook said that Apple is pleased with its growing partnership with Best Buy, where an initial pilot program will expand to nearly 300 stores by the end of the year. This comes at a time where struggling CompUSA, with whom Apple had a long-standing relationship, has shuttered roughly half of its outlets.

In all, Best Buy has some 1,400 stores in the U.S., and, alas, none of the nearby branches have begun to carry Apple products outside of the iPod. I’d suspect, however, that Apple is going to be really careful about its expansion plans, to make sure that customers get the best possible buying experience. They surely don’t want a repetition of past behavior, where sales people would direct people to the PC box for which they received the highest kickback that week when prospective buyers came in asking about Macs.

To me, all this news sounds really positive, although I always reserve the right to be proven wrong.

Nowadays, it seems you can’t give detailed and intelligent answers anymore to the media. Instead, they lust after the pithy 15-second or 30-second sound bite, so it can be inserted between a wraparound report. And it’s not just any old statement, but something you can remember and repeat until the rest of time, even if it’s taken out of context.

So I’m not surprised that AT&T’s report that it activated some 146,000 iPhones during it first 30 hours on sale was dissed as extremely unfavorable news that sent Apple’s stock tumbling. Now I’m not going to say anything here about Apple’s financials, because that will be the topic of tomorrow’s commentary. I prefer to use facts rather than speculation or incomplete data.

But it doesn’t hurt to just look at what AT&T is really saying there, as part of a pretty favorable earnings report. Lest we forget, the iPhone first went on sale on a Friday evening, June 29th, and AT&T’s fiscal quarter ended at midnight on the very next day. All subsequent activations weren’t registered, nor the ones that were delayed due to the system being overwhelmed that weekend.

You should also look carefully at that word, “activations,” because it doesn’t necessarily reflect actual sales of the product. It means someone bought an iPhone, went to their home or office, launched iTunes, and successfully completed the process of provisioning the phone so it could function on AT&T’s network. Simple as that!

Despite this very significant exception to the prevailing wisdom, it didn’t stop Apple’s stock from taking a dump on the belief, yet to be confirmed mind you, that the iPhone wasn’t nearly as successful as people first expected. Compounding the misery is the report that stocks are plentiful, which means you can go and buy one and stand an excellent chance of getting the model you want.

To compound the confusion over AT&T’s singular announcement about the iPhone — no pun intended — Wall Street exists on a tightrope where even the vaguest sense of a favorable or unfavorable event is enough to cause stock prices to become increasingly volatile. Sometimes I wonder if it wouldn’t be a better idea to just go to the gambling tables in Las Vegas and squander my money on the slot machines. At least the outcome is certain; you know the house is going to win.

On Wall Street, only the stock brokers win, because they earn a commission regardless of the outcome.

In the end, though, is anyone to blame for the flap over real or imagined iPhone sales? It’s not as if Apple has been terribly forthcoming about how the product is doing, other than making it possible for you to check availability the night before. To be sure, availability has improved immensely. The last time I checked Apple’s online store, they were quoting a two to four-day delivery timeframe, which means you no longer have to wait long for your iPhone if you would rather have it delivered to your home or office rather than pick it up at a local retailer.

When you add up the cost of driving to a local shopping center and the time you waste searching for a parking lot, the feeling of instant gratification may feel a tad overrated.

Regardless of how successful the product, that should be pretty good news. But you can pretty much get any Apple product without much of a wait these days. This despite the fact that sales across-the-board appear to be continuing at a pretty good clip.

The reason for that is a factor for which Apple is almost universally praised in the tech industry, and that’s its brilliant inventory control. Except for a hot product’s initial introduction period, Apple has managed to figure out precisely how many units of a given model to build and where to ship them for maximum sales.

Alas, good things don’t always generate page views or sell newspapers and magazines. There are far too many vultures in the media who crave bad news, particularly about a company or person who has garnered the lion’s share of attention.

Even when Apple’s financials are almost uniformly positive, there will be far too many analysts and so-called journalists praying for failure. Even minor failures will do. Just watch what happens when Apple’s next quarterly report is released.

The other day, I was interviewing MacFixIt’s Ben Wilson for one of his periodic slots on The Tech Night Owl LIVE. During the conversation, he remarked that reader surveys had shown that the recent 10.4.10 update for Tiger was the most troublesome in recent memory.

This surprised me, largely because I never seem to have any of the problems that other people seem to encounter with regularly. I don’t know that I’m necessarily doing anything different, other than to be a little cautious about third-party system toys, or maybe I’ve just been lucky, and now things will change for the worse because I’ve mentioned them here.

While troubleshooting forums might be heavily weighted towards people with problems, I accept Ben’s comments as entirely accurate. Clearly there’s a disconnect between my experiences and those of others in our audience.

So what went wrong? Well, some folks are encountering AirPort wireless connection issues and related kernel panics, primarily on recent-generation MacBooks and MacBook Pros. Well, my MacBook Pro is of the first generation variety, and it has been outfitted with a replacement AirPort card from our friends at FastMac to support the 802.11n draft standard, so I don’t really fit into any of the conventional categories, but I haven’t had any troubles at all.

Another problem, fixed by a more recent update, caused a popping sound on some of the Intel-based Macs. This isn’t something I can check for myself, since the bottom tip of an audio jack remains stuck in my MacBook Pro’s output port. So much for sound, although I installed the update anyway without incident.

Apple also released and quickly withdraw a SuperDrive firmware update that had the nasty side-effect of disabling drives, which will no doubt keep their service departments busy for a while.

There are also reports of issues with QuickTime 7.2 but that, technically, is not a 10.4.10 update, so we have to put it into another category.

So why is these problems occurring? Did Apple fail to test the 10.4.10 update because the operating system team was too busy putting in the final touches for the iPhone and to get Leopard development back on track? I don’t pretend to have any hard answers, especially with no personal experiences to help illuminate possible causes.

But assuming everything is as bad as it seems, does that mean Apple must put up a 10.4.11 update to set things right? Or will that just create more problems than it solves.

It’s a sure thing, though, that as the Mac OS X user base continues to grow, there will be more opportunities for things to go bad. That’s the nature of the beast, because it also increases the opportunity for unique installation scenarios that might cause some of these ills.

However, I have to tell you that no Mac OS X update was ever as bad as some of the garbage that passed for a Mac system over a decade ago. Let’s return to 1995, for example, when Apple switched to PowerPC computers with PCI expansion slots. Now ditching NuBus for PCI was a great idea, because it made it possible to get accelerated graphics card for much less money, since a manufacturer could leverage their PC product with new firmware. Or at least that was the prevailing theory.

But the Mac OS 7.5 versions that shipped with those computers caused endless nightmares. As I recall, that PCI Power Mac, a 9500, shipped with 7.5.2. It was crash city, and it started misbehaving not 15 minutes after I set up that computer for the first time, and continued every hour or so until Apple delivered relief in the form of the 7.5.3 update. In retrospect, 7.5.3 was nothing special, but after the misery caused by 7.5.2, anything would have seemed a vast improvement.

Although cherished by some old-time Mac users, I don’t recall System 6 as being especially reliable either. I recall working at a pre-press studio in the late 1980s, and hearing Macs restarting several times an hour. Of course, they were running heavy-duty and notoriously bug-prone content creation software too, but you had to wonder how they ever got any work done, and how the Mac came to dominate the graphic arts business. Then again, those early versions of Windows were far, far worse.

Indeed, things have changed far more than our fading memories realize. However severe those problems with the 10.4.10 update might seem, they pale in comparison to what we encountered way back when.

That, however, doesn’t lessen Apple’s obligation to fix the things that are broken, even if it means that Leopard may ship a little bit later.