MacRumors

With today's launch of OS X Mountain Lion, Apple's Up-to-Date program has officially gone live. The program allows any user who purchased a Mac on or after June 11 to receive a free upgrade to OS X Mountain Lion if their system came with OS X Lion preinstalled. Customers who purchased server models such as the Mac mini server and Mac Pro server configurations can also receive free upgrades to Apple's latest server tools released alongside Mountain Lion.

Apple is apparently experiencing some early difficulties with the program, however, with some users reporting that their Mac App Store redemption codes for OS X Mountain Lion are not working and others still waiting to receive their codes. Some users were able to obtain codes earlier this week when the program briefly went live prematurely, but the redemption difficulties appear to be affecting both early recipients and new applicants.

Apple support staff have acknowledged the difficulties and are advising customers that they may need to wait up to three days to receive replacement codes, although some replacement codes are reportedly already coming through without any action required by the users. Submitting the up-to-date program application a second time fails to generate new codes, as Apple's systems recognize that the machine serial numbers have already been used and thus refuse to complete the repeat applications.

Customers who purchased new Macs between June 11 and today have until August 24 to claim their redemption codes for OS X Mountain Lion, but many are undoubtedly anxious to install the new operating system as soon as possible. Users who purchase new Lion-equipped Macs starting tomorrow will have 30 days from the date of purchase in which to claim their free upgrades to Mountain Lion.

With today's release of Safari 6, there has been some confusion over the fate of Safari for Windows. Apple's Safari download page that previously allowed users to download versions for Mac or Windows now redirects to the main Safari page highlighting Safari 6 for Mac, with no mention of Safari for Windows anywhere in Apple's revamped Safari feature pages.

But while Safari for Windows has not been upgraded to version 6 and thus has not received the many new features included for Mac in that release, Apple does appear to be planning to continue quietly offering Safari for Windows. Listings for Safari updates in Apple's support download pages had previously summarized all available Mac and Windows version and provided a link to the general download page, but Apple has now placed Safari for Windows on a dedicated page linking directly to the download.

Safari for Windows remains at version 5.1.7 initially released alongside OS X 10.7.4 in early May. The software is clearly not a high priority for Apple, as evidenced by the removal of all mentions of the Windows option from the main Safari product pages, but the company is keeping the most recent version available for download. It is unclear, however, whether Apple has plans to bring additional feature updates to the browser.

Update: Apple has pulled the standalone Safari 5.1.7 for Windows download page, redirecting visitors to the previous version that links to the now-discontinued general Safari download page. As a result, it appears that Safari for Windows is now not directly linked anywhere in Apple's official download pages.

With Apple having launched OS X Mountain Lion to the public today, reviews of the company's latest Mac operating system have begun pouring in. Many of the reviews are quite extensive, but we've selected a few choice excerpts to highlight general reaction to the release.

- John Siracusa, Ars Technica

The Mac is a platform in transition. In Lion, OS X began shedding the well-worn trappings of traditional desktop computing at an accelerated rate. This trend continues in Mountain Lion. Where Lion stumbled, Mountain Lion regroups and tries again—while still forging bravely ahead in other areas.

As the second major refinement-focused release, it's easy to view OS X 10.8 as "what 10.7 should have been." The flip side of this argument is that the real-world mileage we’ve all put on Lion has helped Apple make the right kinds of adjustments in Mountain Lion. If we'd had to wait for two years after 10.6 for the next major release of OS X, chances are good that the worst of the missteps in Lion would just be landing on our doorsteps today. I'll take 10.8, thanks.

- Jason Snell, Macworld

All told, I found Mountain Lion to be a stable, solid release. Even prerelease builds were far more stable than I’ve come to expect from OS X betas, leading me to wonder if Apple’s new annual schedule is leading to more careful incremental updates (with fewer bugs) rather than great leaps (with more, nastier bugs).

- Nilay Patel, The Verge

Ultimately, this is pretty easy: you should spend the $20 and upgrade to Mountain Lion, especially if you have a newer Mac. You’ll gain a handful of must-have features, and everything will get faster and smoother. I haven’t really missed Snow Leopard at all since upgrading, which is remarkable considering how much I disliked Lion.

- Brian Heater, Engadget

Taken as a whole, the features mark a fairly aggressive bid to fold the best of OS X and iOS into one product -- a strategy we first saw with the introduction of the Mac App Store on Snow Leopard, and with the arrival of Launchpad last year in Lion. [...]

That said, it seems time for Apple to make a bold new pronouncement on the desktop front. The company appears to have most of its resources invested in the mobile side -- and there's no question as to why: the iPhone and iPad have reinvigorated the company, making it a computing player on a scale that no one (save, perhaps, for Jobs himself) could have predicted a decade ago. Still, it might be hard for OS X users not to feel neglected -- many of the latest new features feel a bit like iOS hand-me-downs. When and if Apple rolls out a new operating system this time next year, hopefully we'll be seeing a very different side of Mac OS.

- Jim Dalrymple, The Loop

There will be tens of thousands of words published on Wednesday when Mountain Lion hits the Mac App Store, but let’s face it, what you really want to know is whether Mountain Lion is worth the upgrade. Let’s get that out of the way now — yes, it is definitely worth it.

Mountain Lion costs $19.99 and comes with more than 200 new features — that’s a bargain at twice the price.

- Jesus Diaz, Gizmodo

If Apple doesn't want Microsoft to steal their innovation crown with Windows 8 Metro, they urgently need a new vision that breaks with this unholy mix of obsolete 1980s user interface heritage and iOS full screen skeumorphism.

It feels like Apple has run out of ideas. Or worse, that Apple is too afraid to implement new concepts, fearing it will kill the company's golden goose. Too afraid to change the world once again, as Steve Jobs used to say, one desktop at a time.

- MG Siegler, TechCrunch

It must be said that Mountain Lion isn’t really all that different from Lion — hence, the variation of the name (even though mountain lions are technically cougars — insert joke here). But unlike the jump from Leopard to Snow Leopard, which focused on performance and tightening code rather than features, the jump from Lion to Mountain Lion does pack some new goodies. [..]

In a time when Microsoft is just about to upend their entire OS with their biggest change (and bet) yet in Windows 8, Apple has taken a much more refined approach. Perhaps they take some criticism for this, or perhaps they’re just being savvy. OS X remains a great OS, and sprinkled with some of the best elements of iOS, it still feels pretty fresh. Not bad for an eleven year old big cat.

Alongside OS X Mountain Lion 10.8, Apple has released the updated version of Safari to OS X Lion (10.7). It is available in OS X Lion's Software Update. According to Apple, the new Safari contains new features, including:

- Smart Search Field. Safari now has one field for typing both searches and web addresses.
- Offline Reading List. Safari saves entire webpages in your Reading List so you can catch up on your reading even when you don’t have an internet connection.
- Do Not Track. Safari can send the websites you visit a request not to track you online.
- Password pane. Manage your saved website logins with the new Password pane.
- Baidu. The leading Chinese search engine Baidu is now a built-in option for Chinese users.
For more information about Safari, please visit: http://support.apple.com/kb/HT5275

- Make the swipe to navigate gesture work with PDFs.
- Restore the state of Reading List when Safari is launched.
- Fix an issue that affected full screen video in webpages that have positioned content.
- Restore the user's previous cookies after Private Browsing without requiring a Safari relaunch.

In line with yesterday's brief announcement that OS X Mountain Lion would debut today, Apple has officially launched its next-generation Mac operating system to the public. OS X Mountain Lion [Mac App Store] is priced at $19.99 and is available exclusively through the Mac App Store.

OS X Mountain Lion brings a number of new features and enhancements to the Mac, including improved iCloud integration with support for Notes and Reminders, iMessage support via the new Messages application, Notification Center, Power Nap updating during sleep, Dictation, enhanced sharing tools, Game Center, improved security with Gatekeeper, and more.

“People are going to love the new features in Mountain Lion and how easy it is to download and install from the Mac App Store,” said Philip Schiller, Apple’s senior vice president of Worldwide Marketing. “With iCloud integration, Mountain Lion is even easier to set up, and your important information stays up to date across all your devices so you can keep editing documents, taking notes, creating reminders, and continue conversations whether you started on a Mac, iPhone or iPad.”

For users looking to deploy server capabilities, Apple will also be releasing OS X Mountain Lion Server as a $19.99 add-on via the Mac App Store.

Update: Many users are reporting difficulties purchasing and downloading OS X Mountain Lion, undoubtedly due to heavy load on Apple's servers.

Update 2: OS X Server is now available.

Apple held its Q3 2012 financial results conference call this evening. We have posted a full transcript of the call.

From the call, Apple discusses their expectations for the next quarter which runs through July, August and September. In particular, Apple CFO Peter Oppenheimer expects gross margins to decline in the next quarter due to a "Fall transition". He was unwilling to provide more details on direct questioning:

A: "Fall transition" that I spoke about is driving most of the decline that we see sequentially in gross margin. Not something that we're going to talk about in any level of detail today. We could not be more confident in our new product pipeline.

Apple uses such terms as "Fall transition" to represent changes to their product lines. Lower expected gross margins could point to new products with lower prices. The obvious speculation would point to the much rumored smaller/cheaper 7.85" iPad. Whatever the "fall transition" is, Apple expects it to take place before the end of September in order for it to impact the next quarter.

Apple was also asked about the impact of rumors and speculation on their sales

Q: Rumor and speculation, how much does it hurt sales in the quarter?

A: There's a lot of speculation out there. It's difficult to sort out but I'm fairly convinced that there's an incredible anticipation out there for future products. As you would expect given what we've been able to deliver in the past. I think it's a reasonable amount.

And later...

Try very hard to keep our product roadmap secret and confidential. We go to extremes to do that. That, however, doesn't stop people from speculating or wondering and they'll never do that. The great thing about this country is that people can say what they think and so-forth. I'm not going to spend any energy trying to change that. I'm glad that people want the next thing. I'm super happy about it. There are obviously quite a few that want what we're doing now as well. I'm not going to put any energy into trying to get people to stop speculating. I don't think it would amount to anything.

Finally, Apple is still optimistic about the Apple TV, and continues to believe in it despite it being a comparably smaller market.

Q: Did you give an Apple TV number and updated thoughts?

A: Sold 1.3 million last quarter, up more than 170% year over year. Brings fiscal year to 4 million units. This is pretty incredible. Still at a level that we would call a "hobby" -- continue to pull the string to see where it takes us. Not one to keep around projects that we don't believe in. Lot of people here that believe in Apple TV. Continue to invest.

Q: Don't do hobbies to be hobbies -- do it to make something bigger?

A: We do it because we think it'll lead us somewhere. We'll see. 4 million isn't a small number and there are a lot of believers in it.

We have a full transcript available from the call.

In Apple's earnings press release issued just moments ago, Apple CEO Tim Cook officially announced that OS X Mountain Lion will indeed be launching tomorrow, July 25.

“We’re thrilled with record sales of 17 million iPads in the June quarter,” said Tim Cook, Apple’s CEO. “We’ve also just updated the entire MacBook line, will release Mountain Lion tomorrow and will be launching iOS 6 this Fall. We are also really looking forward to the amazing new products we’ve got in the pipeline.”

OS X Mountain Lion will be priced at $19.99 and will be available via the Mac App Store.

Apple followed a similar tactic last year, announcing at the start of its July earnings conference call that OS X Lion would launch the following day.

Apple today announced financial results for the second calendar quarter and third fiscal quarter of 2012. For the quarter, Apple posted revenue of $35.0 billion and net quarterly profit of $8.8 billion, or $9.32 per diluted share, compared to revenue of $28.57 billion and net quarterly profit of $7.31 billion, or $7.79 per diluted share, in the year-ago quarter.

This will be considered a big "miss" for Apple, as it is dramatically weaker than what analysts were expecting. The company did beat its own guidance, however. Last quarter, Apple said it would make $34 billion in revenue and earnings of $8.67 per share.

Gross margin was 42.8 percent, compared to 41.7 percent in the year-ago quarter, and international sales accounted for 62 percent of the quarter's revenue. Apple's quarterly profit and revenue were both company records for the June quarter. Apple also declared a new quarterly dividend of $2.65 per share payable on August 16 to shareholders as of the close of trading on August 13.

Quarterly iPhone unit sales reached 26.0 million, up 28 percent from the year-ago quarter, and the company sold 17.0 million iPads, up 84 percent year-over-year. Apple sold 4.0 million Macintosh computers, a unit increase of 2 percent over the year-ago quarter. The company also sold 6.8 million iPods, representing a 10 percent unit decline year-over-year.

“We’re thrilled with record sales of 17 million iPads in the June quarter,” said Tim Cook, Apple’s CEO. “We’ve also just updated the entire MacBook line, will release Mountain Lion tomorrow and will be launching iOS 6 this Fall. We are also really looking forward to the amazing new products we’ve got in the pipeline.”

Apple's guidance for the fourth quarter of fiscal 2012 includes expected revenue of $34 billion and earnings per diluted share of $7.65.

Apple will provide live streaming of its Q3 2012 financial results conference call at 2:00 PM Pacific, and MacRumors will update this story with coverage of the conference call highlights.

Conference Call Highlights

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Philip Elmer-Dewitt has put together his list of analyst expectations ahead of Apple's quarterly earnings report this afternoon. The list includes estimates from 68 analysts: 34 "independent" and 34 "institutional" who work for large investment houses or research organizations.

As usual, the independents are much more bullish than the institutional analysts. The independent consensus expects earnings per share (EPS) of $12.31 on revenue of $41.49 billion. The institutional consensus is EPS of $10.33 on $37.21 billion in revenue. This is a 12% difference on revenue and a 19% difference on EPS.

Apple will announce its earnings for the third fiscal quarter of 2012 (second calendar quarter of 2012) and host a conference call regarding the release this afternoon at 5:00 PM Eastern / 2:00 PM Pacific. The earnings release itself typically comes in around 4:30 PM Eastern. MacRumors will have live coverage of the proceedings.

Last quarter the company earned $11.6 billion in profit on revenue of $39.2 billion. For the second fiscal quarter, Apple has issued guidance of $34 billion in revenue with profits of $8.68 per share. The company typically exceeds its guidance by a significant margin.