Apple just announced a record $3 billion in profits and $13.5 billion in sales for the quarter that ended three days before the iPad was delivered. The company’s COO Tim Cook said the company was confident about future quarters, too.

Meanwhile, the stock is starting to approach the estimates that analysts clocked in once the drumbeat of iPad took off. As of this afternoon, the Associated Press reports that shares are at $261 each, about an 8 percent after-hours rise after trading was suspended during today’s Q2 news conference. One investment house thought earlier this month that shares could hit $300 during 2010.

Once upon a time, the analysts and industry experts were predicting nothing as different as Apple’s products could succeed. The company is now at a $50 billion run rate, something that goes along well with a No. 1 rating in most innovative companies (BusinessWeek) and the No. 38 spot in the latest Fortune 500.

Investment in Apple solutions can get looked at askance in some companies. Doing this well in the latest quarter, when Apple sold 3 million Macs in addition to its mobile products, ought to qwell any kvetching you may hear from corporate IT.

We’ll have more tomorrow on today’s Q&A between stock analysts and Cook.

Complete instruction and training, but O'Reilly offers a better deal

An iPhone problem led me into my library of O’Reilly Missing Manuals, an ever-growing sheaf of pages that’s approaching one full foot of dandy advice and training. A Missing Manual for Apple products is often likely to have the crack advice of David Pogue among its authors, making them a pleasure to read and a complete resource. (Pogue created the Missing Manual series.)

But a Missing Manual book is also bound up by the Curse of the Index. Nobody can reference every entry for every word in a book made of paper. The index would run longer than the content. You can spend awhile searching a handful of entries in a paper book, and even if the advice is inside, locating it among 600-odd pages takes time. You might be at deadline on a project and wish there was a faster method to solving a problem — so you can avoid the line at the Apple Genius Bar at the retail stores (if that’s even an option.)

O’Reilly’s got a shortcut for your fixit dilemma. Today the solution is e-books, editions of these Manuals you download and read on a Mac, an iPhone, a Kindle or yes, even the new iPad. Today, all e-book purchases are half-off, in celebration of Earth Day.

I already had the iPhone Missing Manual in my library last weekend, when my iPhone refused to sync up and cough up its photos. I wanted to push a new album onto the phone to show some images to a client. The new iPad was in use elsewhere at Bites HQ. The solution to the iPhone problem was inside the Missing Manual. I might have found it faster if I owned an e-book version instead. Read the rest of this entry »