Apple has released what are likely the final X.Y releases of the macOS 14/iOS 17 generation of operating systems. Only macOS receives any feature changes that Apple documents in release notes; the rest merely admit to “important bug fixes and security updates.” The company also updated older versions of macOS, iOS, and iPadOS to address numerous security vulnerabilities. Our general advice is that these updates are all worth installing soon, but with one exception, you can wait until it’s convenient since none of the vulnerabilities are being exploited in the wild. The exception is macOS 12.7.6 Monterey, which fixes a zero-day vulnerability previously fixed in macOS 14 Sonoma and macOS 13 Ventura.

The people for whom macOS 14.6 Sonoma may be most exciting are owners of the 14-inch M3 MacBook Pro because the update adds support for using up to two external displays when the laptop lid is closed. Previously, the M3 model of the 14-inch MacBook Pro was limited to its built-in display and one external display—Apple hasn’t yet updated its tech specs page. (The M3 Pro models of the 14-inch MacBook Pro support two external displays without closing the lid, and the M3 Max models support up to four external displays.)

However, the M3 MacBook Air introduced the enhanced capability of supporting two external displays when the lid is closed. Since the M3 chip is the same across all Macs that use it, it makes sense that Apple was able to bring the MacBook Air’s double-display feature to the 14-inch M3 MacBook Pro as well.

Howard Oakley also reports that the release candidate for macOS 14.6 claimed that it:

fixes app crashes when running iPhone and iOS apps on Apple silicon Macs, and a complex bug resulting in the hardware video decoder not being used when it should have been.

The other group that will be interested in the remaining changes in macOS 14.6 are enterprise admins. These changes include:

• The login keychain is correctly created the first time a mobile user logs in.
• Enforcing a specific software update version no longer fails if it’s not the most recent available update.
• The FileVault recovery key is no longer shown after updating when configured by MDM to not show the key.
• Users can successfully be added to the access list for Remote Management in System Settings.
• The allowAssistant restriction correctly prevents the Siri app from being opened.

Security Updates

Apart from those changes in macOS 14.6, Apple offers no details about bug fixes in any other operating systems. For security updates, however, the company has provided its usual lists.

• macOS 14.6 Sonoma: 54 vulnerabilities fixed
• macOS 13.6.8 Ventura: 36 vulnerabilities fixed
• macOS 12.7.6 Monterey: 32 vulnerabilities fixed, one zero-day
• iOS 17.6 and iPadOS 17.6: 30 vulnerabilities fixed
• iOS 16.7.9 and iPadOS 16.7.9: 20 vulnerabilities fixed
• iOS 15.8.3 and iPadOS 15.8.3: No fixes with CVE entries
• watchOS 10.6: 24 vulnerabilities fixed
• tv0S 17.6: 16 vulnerabilities fixed
• visionOS 1.3: 15 vulnerabilities fixed

As you can read in “Apple’s Q3 2024 Record Revenues Surprise Tim Cook” (2 August 2024), Michael Cohen and I have covered Apple’s latest earnings report, as we always do, and the broad strokes—Apple rakes in billions! iPhone down! Services up!—have become somewhat repetitive.

Hence my question: Do you find these quarterly financial roundups interesting? TidBITS seldom covers Apple business news, but I see these roundups as a sort of scorecard that gives some insight into why the company might be paying more or less attention to one product line or business segment. Register your vote in the poll in the comments, and tell us if there’s something that would make this information more relevant or interesting to read.

From my perspective, I rather enjoy maintaining and publishing the charts that Josh Centers started for us some years back, but Jason Snell does many more of those at Six Colors. Neither Michael nor I have significant financial backgrounds, so even if we thought the TidBITS audience cared deeply about free cash flow margins and the effect product mix has on gross margins, we’re unqualified to comment on such things.

My main enjoyment from these articles comes from listening to Tim Cook and Luca Maestri list out the company’s financial successes and troubles. I always get a kick out of Cook’s rhetorical contortions to smooth over negative results or immediately counter an obvious negative with a positive. Along with the evocative and increasingly common phrase “foreign exchange headwinds,” which gives me visions of Cook tacking a schooner into a stiff breeze of Chinese renminbi notes, I love sentences like these:

In iPad, revenue for the March quarter was $5.6 billion, 17% lower year-over-year due to a difficult compare with the momentum following the launch of M2 iPad Pro and the tenth-generation iPad last fiscal year.

Wearables, Home, and Accessories revenue was $8.1 billion, down 2% year-over-year, a sequential acceleration from the March quarter.

You have to be impressed by Cook’s May 2024 pairing of “difficult compare” with the “momentum” from the 2022 launch of the M2 iPad Pro, plus his use of “a sequential acceleration” to indicate that the revenue decline in Wearables was less bad than the previous quarter.

I also like listening to the analysts try to get Cook and Maestri to reveal something—anything!—that wasn’t in the prepared statement or previously announced. With very few exceptions, Cook meets all questions with a recap of what he just said and one or more boilerplate statements about how Apple isn’t going to get out in front of its announcements, how it’s too early to say anything, or how Apple can’t wait to see what amazing things developers come up with. It’s a master class in not answering the question, and every time, the analyst has to thank him for it.

But I’m not having so much fun covering these earnings reports to keep doing it if you, our readers, are skipping the articles anyway. So register your vote in the poll in the comments, and feel free to add some color in a comment.

Reporting on its Q3 2024 financial results, Apple has announced quarterly earnings of $21.45 billion, with revenues of $85.8 billion, a “new June quarter record and better than we had expected,” according to Apple CEO Tim Cook. The company’s revenues were up 5% compared to the year-ago quarter (see “Apple Q3 2023 Earnings Down 1% on Exchange Rates,” 4 August 2023).

The quick summary: Apple’s Services and iPad segments increased significantly compared to last year, with Services up 14% and iPad up 24%. The Mac was also up about 2%, but the iPhone fell 1% and Wearables dropped 2%. Internationally, nearly all geographic segments reported modest increases apart from Greater China, which posted somewhat lower results compared to last year.

Despite its year-over-year decline, the iPhone continues to dominate Apple’s revenue mix, with Services occupying an ever-larger piece of the pie and Mac, iPad, and Wearables sharing the remaining slots.

iPhone

Though iPhone revenues were down 1%, Apple took pains to note that they would have been up if not for currency issues, presumably mainly in Greater China, where half of the year-over-year decline was attributed to exchange rates. Nonetheless, iPhone revenues set Q3 records in the United Kingdom, Spain, Poland, Mexico, Indonesia, and the Philippines. More importantly, the iPhone installed base hit an all-time high, which helped drive Services growth.

Mac

The 2% year-over-year increase in Mac sales last quarter was driven by sales of the new M3 MacBook Air (see “New M3 MacBook Air Models Can Drive Two Displays,” 4 March 2024). Mac sales posted Q3 records in Latin America, India, and South Asia. Apple also noted that half of MacBook Air customers are new to the platform, increasing the size of the active installed base and helping drive Services growth.

iPad

Although last quarter seemed to portend a nadir in iPad sales due to Apple’s failure to release any new models in 2023, the same could not be said for this quarter. Sales of the tablet rose nearly 24% thanks to the release of the 11-inch and 13-inch iPad Air, along with the M4-based iPad Pro (see “Apple Unveils New iPad Air, iPad Pro, Apple Pencil Pro, and Magic Keyboard,” 7 May 2024). Just as with the Mac, half of iPad purchasers are new customers.

Wearables

The Wearables segment’s revenues declined by roughly 2% in the quarter. Apple attributed the drop to “a difficult compare against prior-year launches of the AirPods Pro second generation, the Watch SE, and the first Watch Ultra.” It’s unclear how this continues to affect the Q3 2024 results, given that those products all appeared in September 2022 (see “Second-Generation AirPods Pro Add H2 Chip, Touch Control, Enhanced Case,” 7 September 2022, and “Apple Watch Series 8 and Apple Watch Ultra Expand Health, Safety, and Connectivity Features,” 7 September 2022). Nevertheless, this slight decline is countered by high customer satisfaction ratings, and even with no new products in this category, nearly two-thirds of Apple Watch sales are to first-time purchasers.

Unsurprisingly, Apple said nothing quantitative surrounding the Vision Pro, although Tim Cook gave it a laudatory paragraph in which he noted it was available in more countries. They include Australia, Canada, China mainland, France, Germany, Hong Kong, Japan, Singapore, and the United Kingdom. That will boost Vision Pro revenues, though it’s still far too rarified of a product to stand out in Apple’s financials.

Services

The Services segment continues to bring home the bacon for Apple, flaunting 14% year-over-year growth, with both paid accounts and paid subscriptions showing double-digit growth. Apple said paid accounts have doubled over the last four years, and the Services segment hit all-time records in advertising, cloud, and payment services. The company didn’t explain what “cloud” means; perhaps iCloud+?

Regional

The increases in Apple’s regional revenue figures are hardly dramatic, but with the exception of Greater China, Apple is performing well in all its international markets. In Greater China, revenues dropped 6.5%, but Cook said, “If you look at it on a constant currency basis, we declined by less than 3%. So over 50% of the decline year over year is currency-related. That is an improvement from the first half of the fiscal year.” After that, Cook reeled off a series of positive statistics about Apple’s sales in China, ending with, “We continue to be confident in the long-term opportunity in China. I don’t know how every chapter of the book reads, but we’re very confident in the long term.”

Apple’s next financial quarter will reflect new iPhone releases and the initial rollout of the much-anticipated Apple Intelligence features, which require an M-series chip on the Mac and iPad, or an A17 Pro on the iPhone. Although numerous analysts tried to get Tim Cook to predict how demand for Apple Intelligence would drive upgrades and thus affect Apple’s revenues, Cook steadfastly refused to be drawn into any speculation. Nonetheless, it seems obvious that having marquee features of Apple’s 2024 operating systems unavailable on older hardware will encourage upgrades. Those upgrades won’t necessarily happen immediately, though, since Apple Intelligence features will roll out slowly over the next year. As a result, Apple expects the next quarter’s financial results to look much like this quarter’s figures.

In short, Apple is staying the course and playing a long game: not a bad strategy to attract those looking for a safe place to put their investment dollars.

Now that you’ve read our summary of Apple’s latest financial results, we’re curious: Do you find these quarterly financial roundups sufficiently interesting that we should keep doing them? In “LittleBITS: Should We Continue Covering Apple Financials?” (2 August 2024), Adam explains why we’re asking and links to a poll where you can register your opinion.