So Apple posted their 1st quarter numbers today.  58% growth in net income (to 1.58 billion), and sales by 35% (to $9.61 billion).  They sold a record 2.32 million Macs (a growth of 47%–to $3.55 billion) and 2.3 million iPhones.

Sounds like a great quarter, right?   So what happened?

The stock price dropped by about $15 / 10% (at one point today it had dropped almost $30/20%) down to  $137 a share.

Why?  Because Apple is predicting that profit this quarter will rise to 94 cents a share, but some analysts on the street were predicting that Apple would predict $1.09 per share of profit for the next quarter.

Doesn’t make a whole lot of sense, does it?

Most analysts though still give Apple an Outperform/Buy/Above Average rating, and a stock price targets of $165 on the conservative side up to $225 or higher.

What does this mean for you?  This is a great opportunity to buy!  It will probably be back up 50% or more by the end of Apple’s fiscal Q2.

It is also a good time to buy other tech stocks, as many others have also taken a sharp hit today including Google (-5%).

Just a sneak preview of some tech articles / blog posts I’ve been working on, that you can expect to be online in the next few months:

• Creating Cellular-GPS Tracking Device
• All About Gasoline
• Design Philosophies of Quicksilver (Case Study)
• Media Center Round-Up
• Fixing Scanlines / Color Tint Issues on Sony Projection TVs

From earlier in the week, I looked deep in my crystal ball and make the following MacWorld Predictions:

So to wrap up, here are my predictions in a concise format:

• Several New iPhone Apps
• Major iPhone OS Update
• New Apple TV
• New Apple HDTV Cinema Display for Home Theater
• New Wireless capabilities in the portables (and possible desktops)
• Portables will get Speed Bump / Price Drop
• iMacs will get Speed Bump / Price Drop

So I was pretty close. I think that it is a matter of time before the Apple TV has a display companion–my prediction is on or before the next MacWorld (SF).

The Mac Book Air is pretty interesting, probably will be my next notebook. I wouldn”t miss having an optical drive for reading, but I do write a fair bit of CD’s/DVD’s on the go (for work).

The new Time Capsule is also pretty interesting. It is a no-brainer backup solution for multi-Mac environments. It would be awesome if someone came up with a way to also backup Windows PCs using a time-machine like system to the Time Capsule. There has to be a better way to back up Windows machines.

Disappointingly, it looks like the iMacs did not get a price drop, so I’ll be looking at buying a refurb if they are a good enough deal.

I know its a bit late, seeing as the MacWorld Keynote is tomorrow morning, but figure I’d get my MacWorld predictions in under the wire.

With the announcement of the upgraded Mac Pro’s coming last week–just the sort of thing they normally annouce at Mac World–I’ve been scratching my head a bit about what WILL be annouced next week.

Furthermore, I’ve been wondering what the several hundred iPhone and Leopard engineers have been working on lately. I’m surprised it has been so quiet, and I suspect that it will be something pretty big.

In general though, I think it will be “All About the iPhone”. The SDK will be released, I expect that a number of developers have been working with Apple behind the scenes to insure that there will be a couple really cool applications that are launched to give people and idea of what is possible.

I also think that they will be announcing (and probably releasing) a MAJOR iPhone OS update that will include a lot of improvements and refinements of the 1.0 stuff that was released over the summer.

I suspect that part of the iPhone SDK, and part of the effort to help adoption rates, and allow people to test-drive the iPhone apps, we will be able to run the apps on Leopard-based Macs, possibly as dashboard widgets.

I am thinking that the Apple TV will probably get a major facelift–and it needs it. The home-theater / media center marketplace is almost exactly in the shape now that the cellular phone market was last January. There are a smattering of product offerings from various vendors–all of which are too technical or just don’t work well. Microsoft has a product that is decent, but not fantastic, and is encumbered with a lot of DRM BS (check back for a future blog posting about this).

I think Apple has been thinking about the living room quite a bit, and probably will be making big efforts to tie in the digital lifestyle components. Perhaps even a Cinema Display for the home theaters–perhaps even with a built-in Apple TV unit.

A lot of folks are talking about an ‘ultra-portable’ Mac. I’m not 100% sure it is going to be announced or released. I give it a 50-50. I do think that all the portables will get a speed bump, at a bare minimum.

More likely (and perhaps more interestingly) I think that all the portables will have either Edge or perhaps WiMax wireless capabilities built-in. This ties in a bit with what I’m predicting about the iPhone apps working on the regular Macs–access your stuff anywhere! There is even a possibility that the desktops will support the enhanced long-distance wireless stuff as well, but more likely it will be optional upgrades on the new Macs.

The iMac line will also get speed boosts, and probably price drops as well. I certainly hope so as I’m planning on buying a new iMac within the next 4 weeks.

So to wrap up, here are my predictions in a concise format:

• Several New iPhone Apps
• Major iPhone OS Update
• New Apple TV
• New Apple HDTV Cinema Display for Home Theater
• New Wireless capabilities in the portables (and possible desktops)
• Portables will get Speed Bump / Price Drop
• iMacs will get Speed Bump / Price Drop

We’ll see how I do next week!

On a side note: Apple stock is down a bit lately (170 this weekend, ~179 today), now is the perfect time to buy some stock if you have the means. I think that it will be back to 200+ by the end of the month and probably at 220 by the end of Q1.

So the most difficult and greatest sporting event in the world has been canceled due to security issues caused by terrorist threats. The 29-year old Dakar Rally (formerly called the Paris-Dakar Rally) is a three-week long race across the tougest terrain in Africa. The 2008 course would have started in Lisbon, Portugal and ended in Dakar, Senegal which is the western-most tip of the African Continent. The rally would have covered almost 6,000 total miles–more than 3,000 of which would have been “special stages” where competitors race against the clock and their fellow rallyists.

There are several classes of vehicles ranging from motorcycles and ATVs, purpose-built buggies and cars, to full-sized trucks/lorries. 550 competitors were slated to start today, and indeed had even finished Scrutineering (safety and technical inspections).

The cancellation was triggered after the murder of four French tourists (two adults and two children) were murdered in Mauritania on Christmas Eve. Authorities in Mauritania claim that the murders were carried out by an Algerian-based al Queda terror cell, that was also linked to the killing of several soldiers last week.

The organizers of the event state that “The cancellation of the 2008 edition does not endanger the future of the Dakar.”