Reading List

The most recent articles from a list of feeds I subscribe to.

Jason Snell on Apple’s Quarterly Results

Jason Snell, writing at Six Colors:

In the post-results call with financial analysts, Wamsi Mohan of Bank of America asked Cook for a little more detail about Apple’s search revenue, given its lucrative deal with Google, and whether that revenue growth might decelerate if Google’s search traffic were to be impacted by the growth of AI. Cook’s response was, if I do say so myself, an all-timer for these calls:

Cook: This is Tim. The advertising category, which is a combination of third-party and first-party, did set a record during the quarter.

Mohan: Okay, and sorry, just to be clear, both Apple’s own internal advertising and within the licensing individually set records?

Cook: I actually I’m not saying that. I’m just saying that the combination of the two set a record. We don’t divulge — I’m dodging the question intentionally because we don’t split it at that level.

Look, these calls are almost entirely Apple execs dodging the questions of fiscal analysts. At least Tim Cook admitted it this time. You want to know how much Google is paying us and if that’s growing or shrinking? Well, I’m not gonna tell you!

If Apple’s quarterly analyst calls were a podcast, “Dodging the Question Intentionally” would be a great episode title for this one.

Microsoft Earnings Suggest OpenAI Lost $11.5 Billion Last Quarter

Matt Rosoff, writing for The Register:

If Microsoft owns 27 percent of OpenAI, it stands to reason under equity accounting that it bears 27 percent of OpenAI’s losses. Microsoft’s admission that it shaved $3.1 billion off its net income to account for its share of OpenAI losses therefore suggests OpenAI lost about $11.5 billion during the quarter. Microsoft declined to comment beyond confirming that the $3.1 billion loss “this year” referred to Microsoft’s current fiscal year, which started July 1, not the calendar year. So that’s a quarterly loss, not a nine-month loss.

That’s a humongous number for OpenAI given it reportedly generated only $4.3 billion in revenue for the first half of the year, but a sum that won’t hurt Big Daddy Redmond too much given it earned $27.7 billion in net income in the last quarter alone.

A pre-IPO startup is a different animal from an established publicly-held corporation, but an $11.5 billion quarterly loss is quite different from the $20–30-ish billion quarterly profits booked by the big six.

Swift 6.2: Subprocess

Holly Borla: Swift 6.2 introduces a new Subprocess package that offers a streamlined, concurrency‑friendly API for launching and managing external processes. SF-0007: The existing Foundation API for spawning a process, NSTask, originated in Objective-C. It was subsequently renamed to Process in Swift. As the language has continued to evolve, Process has not kept up. It […]

NeoFinder 9.0

Norbert Doerner: New Cataloging engine with more speed and reliability […] Ability to move files to new folders inside a Catalog Text Replacements for the XMP Editor for faster annotations […] Image Capture to import photos and videos from connected cameras, including adding XMP presets, and store them in a date based folder structure [guide] […]

Apple Reports Strong Q4 2025 Results

Apple Newsroom:

Apple today announced financial results for its fiscal 2025 fourth quarter ended September 27, 2025. The Company posted quarterly revenue of $102.5 billion, up 8 percent year over year. Diluted earnings per share was $1.85, up 13 percent year over year on an adjusted basis.

“Today, Apple is very proud to report a September quarter revenue record of $102.5 billion, including a September quarter revenue record for iPhone and an all-time revenue record for Services,” said Tim Cook, Apple’s CEO.

Looking at Apple’s Consolidated Statement (PDF), the numbers look great across the board year-over-year: iPhone up 6%, Mac up 13%, iPad even, Wearables/Home even, and Services up 15%. Services now generates more revenue ($28.8 billion) than Mac, iPad, and Wearables/Home combined ($24.7 billion).

Six Colors, as usual, has Apple’s quarter illustrated in charts.

Here’s a comparison of net income (profit) from Apple’s peers for their most recent quarters:

  • Google (a.k.a. Alphabet): $35B (!)
  • Microsoft: $27.7B
  • Apple: $27.5B
  • Nvidia: $26.4B
  • Amazon: $21.5B
  • Meta: $2.7B, but would have been $18.6B if not for a one-time income tax charge of nearly $16B.