It wasn’t all big hardware news at Apple’s Spring Loaded event. As a warmup to the cavalcade of major rollouts, Apple CEO Tim Cook spun through announcements of a new Apple Card Family service, a revamped Podcasts app that includes premium subscriptions, and a snazzy new iPhone color that Prince would have loved—yes, it’s purple.

Posting record results for the last quarter, Apple enjoyed double-digit sales growth for all its product categories and tallied increased revenues in every geographic sector.

In this pandemic year, Apple’s Q4 performance saw reduced profits but steady revenue compared to the same quarter last year, with iPhone sales drops mitigated by increased Mac and iPad sales as well as continuing growth in Apple’s services and wearables offerings.

For its third fiscal quarter of 2020, Apple reported quarterly record financial results that far exceeded consensus estimates, managing to show revenue increases in all of its product segments and geographic sectors. Chalk it up to people working and learning from home.

Described as being the biggest update to macOS since OS X, macOS Big Sur features streamlined design, more customizable controls, privacy enhancements, and increased interoperability with iPadOS and iOS. X hasn’t marked the spot for several years, but we’re now in Spinal Tap territory: it’s macOS 11.0 Big Sur, for those who are keeping score.

Apple’s education-oriented ebook creation software will receive no further updates and will be pulled from the Mac App Store. The company is encouraging users to switch to Pages, promising that a future update to Pages will be able to import iBooks Author files.

Despite a pandemic and a pending economic catastrophe, Apple still managed to eke out some growth in Q2 2020, largely thanks to its Wearables and Services categories.

Version 12 of Smile's PDF-editing apps, PDFpen and PDFpenPro, include a new magnifier window, compression and optimization capabilities, new document stationery, a callout tool, and, for pro users, a new digital signature feature.

Thanks to the iPhone 11, Apple’s iPhone product segment saw a return to growth in Q1 2020, while iPad and Mac sales were off. Meanwhile, the Wearables and Services categories continue to grow.

Skyrocketing revenues in Services and Wearables more than made up for a decline in iPhone revenues, proving that Apple is no longer just the iPhone company.

Apple relieved media-heightened suspense at its September event by unveiling the debut dates and prices for its Apple Arcade and Apple TV+ services.

iPhone revenues now account for less than half of Apple’s revenues, but Services and Wearables more than made up the difference. And CEO Tim Cook announced that the Apple Card will become available this August.

The latest versions of Apple’s Pages all offer easy table-of-contents creation. Here’s how to make them and why you might want to, even if you’re not publishing a book.

It has been a long time coming, but Apple’s new highly configurable Mac Pro and Pro Display XDR monitor raise the bar—and the price—of a high-end Mac workstation. Well-heeled creative professionals who need maximum performance will be delighted.

Smile has updated its PDF editing apps, PDFpen and PDFpenPro, to version 11, offering a new Split View capability, a Font Bar for easy PDF text formatting, and other welcome conveniences.