Appletell

After a rather dismal first part of the calendar year, with AAPL shedding over $80 at its worst, things are looking very up for Apple, with many analysts reversing their downgrading of stock estimates for the company.

RBC Capital Markets analyst Mike Abramsky raised his target price to $190 a share, Goldman Sachs analyst David Bailey raised his call on AAPL from $175 to $185. Citigroup set a $212 price target. Thomas Weisel Partners raised their call to $195, all in the past week. The consensus seems to be that while iPod/iPhone sales are slower, Mac sales haven’t been better and will boost the company to yet another successful quarter.

On Wednesday, Apple will broadcast it’s 2nd Quarter 2008 Result Conference Call on the web. Last time they had a conference call, they had a record breaking quarter but all anyone could focus on was the fact that iPod sales weren’t fantastic, but rather steady year over year. This sent the stock into a downturn. MacRumors compiled a little list of all that has happened this quarter:

On the Mac front, the early portion of this quarter saw the release of upgraded Mac Pros and Xserves just prior to Macworld San Francisco, with the new MacBook Air following suit at the expo. New Penryn-based MacBook Pros and MacBooks followed at the end of February.

This quarter also saw the release of Time Capsule, revitalized AppleTV and AirPort Express offerings, and higher-capacity models of the iPhone, iPod touch, and iPod shuffle. Also of note, Apple released a limited beta version of the iPhone 2.0 software, including a Software Development Kit (SDK) to allow developers to create third-party applications for the iPhone.

Listen into the call this Wednesday [Apple.com]

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One of the best educational activities for handheld media players, Brain Quest, is now available for purchase in select Apple stores as well as online at Raybook.com.  This software costs $29.95 and matches all grades from one to seven.  It has received numerous awards, one from Money magazine naming it one of the best 50 values in the USA as well as one from Sesame Street magazine putting it in the top 9 products for kids.

“Brain Quest for iPod gives kids a similar experience to the paper-based flash cards, but with added portability and interactivity,“ says Mark Williams, the company’s CEO and founder. “It delivers fun educational content on a device that is already part of their everyday enjoyment, providing opportunities for young learners to practice basic facts on the go. This keeps them in the learning zone.“  With podcasts and educational TV stations already available on the iPod, will this one day be the classroom of the future?

Via [prMac]

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It’s looking like a pretty good chance that The Beatles library is finally coming to iTunes. ThisIsLondon.co.uk reports that Paul McCartney is selling the Beatles’ back catalogue online, valued at over £200 million. Apparently he is selling this to help with his highly publicized divorce from Heather Mills.

The Beatles’ singles and albums, including “Help!,“ “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band,“ and “The White Album,“ are expected to be on iTunes anytime this year following the divorce proceedings.

There have been rumors at about every Apple event about the Beatles coming to iTunes, but this one seems to really make sense.

Via [ThisIsLondon]

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EasyMoney is intended to help you keep track of your finances. You create an account book, add an initial amount, then add expense and revenue accounts, and enter transactions. Everything is tracked in a single interface.

You can view, save and print all financial activities or just those that occurred during a particular month, track income and expenses by accounts (or categories) to help you budget, and allocate starting amounts for categories to help with accounting.

EasyMoney is a Universal binary and available from To The Point Software for $20.

Product Page [EasyMoney]

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• Who’s On Crack in tech: 11.21.08 edition

You know that $600 iPhone? The one that you can’t afford. The one that Steve Jobs said that they would lower the prices of, if their costs weren’t so high. Well, it turns out Apple’s costs may not actually be as high as Apple implies.

iSuppli, located in El Segundo California, recently dissected the 8GB iPhone, and determined that the cost of the hardware of the iPhone was only $265.83 leaving Apple with a 55% profit margin. Naturally, some of that 55% will go towards other costs such as R&D, and the purchase of very important domain names, however, Apple is still making a significant amount of profit on the machine itself.

While most companies only many single-digit profit margins, Apple seems to be taking a different route. Instead of lowering the price of the cell phone to attract more customers, Apple is charging more upfront for the cell phone, but promising to deliver software updates that will add new features.

In the end, we will see which business model works.

Read [Appleinsider]

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