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%).

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.

I have a 15″ Powerbook G4, 1.25GHz with 1GB of RAM and an 80GB hard drive. Also known as the “Aluminum” PowerBooks. I recently got a Mac Book Pro for work and am going to be getting a new iMac for home, so its time to sell the notebook that was my primary computer. Looking to get $725 for it. Located in Issaquah, WA.

Apple PowerBook G4 15-inch w/ SuperDrive $725
Model M8981LL/A
1.25GHz PowerPC G4
512MB PC2700 (333MHz) DDR SDRAM
80GB Ultra ATA/100 Hard Drive
15.2-inch (diagonal), 1280×854 resolution, TFT widescreen
ATI Mobility Radeon 9600 with 64MB of DDR SDRAM videocard
SuperDrive (DVD-R/CD-RW)
Built-in 10/100/1000BASE-T Gigabit Network Card
Built-in Bluetooth
Built-in 54-Mbps AirPort Extreme (802.11 / WiFi)
Built-in 56K V.92 modem
Keyboard is full size, illuminated with ambient light sensor

Comes with original software, manuals and boxes. Includes power adapter with the long power cord and the S-Video to Composite video adapter.

Includes a Targus notebook case. I’m trying to find an extra 512MB of RAM around here somewhere. Everything on it works.

Comes with a fresh install of Mac OS X Tiger–boots up just like a brand new mac, ready for your personalization information.

There is only one issue with this machine: it has some “screen blotches”, which are bright spots on the screen that occurred shortly after I bought it brand new from Apple. It was recalled, but I couldn’t spare the machine long enough to have the screen replaced. They are now refusing to replace it under the recall, so I’m having to sell it as it is. Selling it at a bit of a discount for this reason.

I am selling because I have a new Mac Book Pro.

Please only serious buyers. Cash or PayPal only (no foreign cashiers checks, money orders, etc.).

Interested? Email me.

I got Rock Band for XBox 360 last night, and started playing it tonight. Its a lot of fun playing the drum set, but I realized almost immediately that it seems to be missing a ‘freestyle mode’ that would let you just wail.

The drum controller is a wired USB device, so I figured I would try getting it to work on my Mac with Garage Band. Turned out to be pretty easy. To get it working you’ll need:

• A Mac
• Garage Band
• Rock Band for XBox 360
• XBox 360 Controller Driver - Open Source & GPL
• Gamepad Companion (makes it so you can map the keys on your controllers) - Proprietary / Shareware

First step is to leave your drum set unplugged from your Mac (if you plugged it in you’ll realize it is recognized as a Harmonix Drum Kit for Xbox 360). Install the Xbox 360 Controller Driver and Gamepad Companion. The 360 Controller Driver installer will say you need to reboot–but it worked for me without rebooting.

If you launch System Preferences you’ll notice a few new panes at the bottom.

Click on XBox 360 Controllers first. Plug in your drum kit, and it should locate the controller immediately. Go ahead and belt out a few hits to make sure that the buttons are lighting up as they should.

Once satisified, go ahead and click “Show All” to get back to System Preferences. The controller is working and recognized, but we need to map the buttons to keys that Garage Band can recognize. To do that we’re going to click on Gamepad Companion.

The driver maps the buttons like so:

• Button 1 = Green
• Button 2 = Red
• Button 3 = Blue
• Button 4 = Yellow
• Button 5 = Kick/Pedal

When we set up the keyboard interface in Garage Band later, certain keys will activate certain instruments. Here is a good key-mapping setup that works for most of the drum kits in Garage Band that features a bass/kick drum, a snare, two toms and a cymbal.

• Button 1 Map to U
• Button 2 Map to S
• Button 3 Map to J
• Button 4 Map to F
• Button 5 Map to A

There are tons of other instruments and configurations you can use, but this will get you started. Once you’re done mapping the buttons, go ahead and click “Start” to enable Gamepad Companion.

Just to make sure everything is working, I’d recommend opening up TextEdit or some other editor and wail a bit on the drums, to make sure that it is mapping the keys properly. If it is, you should see a bunch of letters typing across the screen. The repeat rate seems like it would be a problem in Garage Band, but it works fine the way it is.

Now it is time to launch Garage Band. Start a new song, which will have a default instrument of “Grand Piano”. Double-click “Grand Piano” to show the Information/Instrument drawer. Browse to “Drum Kit” and then select “Rock Kit”.

We now have to configure the keyboard. Hit Command-K or Window->Keyboard to bring up the keyboard interface. Basically the Mac keyboard is just to small for all the musician’s keys. So we need to select the C1 octave range either by dragging the blue selected keys, or hitting the plus/minus octive buttons (either on-screen or by hitting Z / X). Once you have C1 selected, you’re ready to rock!

Added note: It is possible to get the Rock Band Drums working with software on the Windows Platform as well, and apparently the PS3 controller works in a similar fashion.