Trevor McKendrick describes his first year in the App Store, All of this from a little app that I launched for less than $500. That’s the story.

(Via Harry Marks)

It’s quarterly conference call day. Will Apple disappoint again or has Tim Cook cooked the numbers?

Well, come on. We know it can’t be that Apple’s a highly successful company that sells bazillions of its products to highly satisfied customers. Pff. As if.

Average analyst prediction of earnings: $10.07/share.

Erik Sherman writing for CBS about the “Apple meltdown” (via Sat Tara Khalsa):

Anonymous supply chain sources say that iPad mini unit sales could drop 20 percent to 30 percent this quarter, compared with the same period last year.

(Emphasis mine.)

Apple’s apparently doing so badly that returns of the iPad mini will be so high next quarter that they’ll drive sales into negative numbers. Which is the only way they could sell fewer than zero.

That pretty much sums up the current state of reporting on Apple right there, doesn’t it?

John Gruber:

How low has Apple’s valuation dropped? As of today it’s lower than Dell. Wall Street thinks Dell has a brighter future than Apple.

Go home, Wall Street, you’re drunk.

No, seriously. Take the train. Go home. Think about your life. Because this? This is no good.

Benedict Evans shows that Android’s market share in the U.S. is what other, less temperate writers than I would call “dead in the water”.

On Twitter, Evans said:

I think the fundamental message of US smartphone share is that Android does poorly when it’s at effective price parity with iPhone

Dan Lyons finally settles the question: “Trolling or just stupid?”

I’ve also spent the past few years writing “articles” that were less and less interesting — they were basically just SEO chum thrown out onto the internet in hopes of catching traffic.

Trolling. Good to know.

And good riddance.

ZDNet’s Adrian Kingsley-Hughes says the war of words between Microsoft and OEMs has reached “arguing over the kids” territory:

Privately, one OEM source told me that Microsoft is “destroying” the PC industry, while another claimed that Windows 8 has “handed over millions of customers to Apple.”

I’ll just note the makers of netbooks and MacBook Air clones aren’t exactly blameless, either.

Benedict Evans runs some numbers and estimates there are 6.8 million Nexus 7s and 680k Nexus 10s in use, give or take almost 50 percent. (You estimate with the numbers you have, realizing it could be off.)

Anecdotally, my Nexus 7 has gone from “able, if uninspiring, small tablet” to “ugh, you piece of crap, I hate you” status. As an e-reader and light gaming platform for my wife before she got an iPad mini it was fine. I then tried to turn it into a media device for my office desk and found that at just 10 months old the battery doesn’t hold much of a charge anymore and the audio bleeds interference from either the cordless phone or microcell tower on my desk. Not so with the old iPhone 3GS I’m using instead.

It shouldn’t be that surprising that a $200 device isn’t built all that well. What should be surprising is analysts and pundits who automatically assume a low price means a winner.

The Verge’s Tom Warren:

Microsoft is planning to change the way its Start Screen operates with the release of Windows 8.1. Sources familiar with Microsoft’s plans have revealed to The Verge that the company is currently testing builds of Windows 8.1, known as codename Windows Blue, that include an option to boot directly to the traditional desktop.

I don’t understand this need to have one device that “does everything” (crappily), but if you’re going to do that it seems it needs to operate in two different visually distinct modes: touch and desktop. The user either needs to switch modes or the device needs to detect which mode it’s being used in. It’s not certain what Windows Blue will offer yet, but simply capitulating and allowing users to turn off Metro is not a solution to the problem they’ve created for themselves. It might be a solution to using Windows 8x on the desktop, but getting people to use their software on the desktop wasn’t their real problem.