Looks like we can chalk up one more Street-beating quarter for Apple, folks. Since we were stuck in post-Expo traffic, we didn't actually get to listen to the Q3 conference call live, but we finally had a chance to tune in to the QuickTime rebroadcast, and the financial state that Apple described is so rosy you'd swear it's been hitting the sauce. Check out the big picture in Apple's press release, which reports that the company posted a $61 million profit last quarter-- $67 million if you don't count a one-time restructuring charge. That's ten million more simoleons than the analysts had been predicting, which is, of course, always a happy occurrence.

But the real stuff to celebrate is the details. Compared to the same quarter last year, Apple's Mac unit sales rose 14% and its iPod unit sales rose a frankly ridiculous 183%. The money picture is even brighter: Mac revenue was up 19%, music-based revenue was up 162%, and Apple's overall revenue rose 30% to become, as Steve describes it, Apple's "highest third quarter revenue in eight years." If you listen to the conference call you'll hear even more good news. We understand if you don't think you can emotionally handle Apple's first earnings conference call without Fred Anderson, but while we miss him too, Pete Oppenheimer did great-- trust us. (It's far less jarring of a transition than the Steve-to-Joe handoff on Blue's Clues was.)

If you still don't think you can face it, you can always just skim through MacMinute's and MacNN's highlights of the call to get the bite-sized factoids and number breakdowns. The one fact that gives us more optimism than any other is that Apple's sales to the education market rose 16% last quarter, while the rest of the industry's had shrunk "by double digits." Some tidbits seem like bad news but are really good-- like the fact that eMacs outsold iMacs by more than three to one. If Apple can turn in such strong results when it's selling so few iMacs, imagine how well things should pick up once the new model ships in September.

Oh, and about that; Pete actually confirmed that the new iMac will be G5-based. Was revealing technical details about an unannounced product a rookie mistake? Nope-- he wanted the analysts to understand the iMac delay in context, and insists that constrained supplies of G5s from IBM was its primary cause (and not the heat issues rumored yesterday).

Speaking of interesting revelations countering recent rumors, Peter also revealed that the Office Depot arrangement only allows the company to sell Macs on its web site, and not in its retail stores as was recently reported-- so if you had been hyperventilating over the chance of yet another retail debacle, you can relax. Also, the pilot program evaluating the possibility of reinstating Best Buy as a Mac retail partner has ended with both companies concluding that Best Buy should stick to iPods, which we consider another bullet dodged.

But back to the numbers. The markets were closed by the time Apple posted its earnings, but Wall Street's reaction to the day's announcements ought to be pretty positive, given that AAPL is up over two bucks in after-hours trading. As you know, that's pretty rare; usually when Apple posts better-than-expected earnings, its stock price falls following the announcement, due to an obscure economic phenomenon that has something to do with albino chickens and Nestlé's Quik. We'll see what happens when the markets open, but we've got a good feeling about all this. Heck, who wouldn't, given all the warm fuzzies during that conference call?

Meanwhile, we should note that the winner of our quarterly Beat the Analysts contest was none other than faithful viewer Richard Hamilton, who was the first entrant to have guessed Apple's $67 million profit right on the nose. We'll be contacting Richard shortly to hook him up with his choice of AtAT apparel or something dusty but still shrinkwrapped from our Baffling Vault of Antiquity™. Many thanks to all who entered, and remember-- next quarter's never more than a quarter away.