That's not at all true. They beat earnings. It's the forward looking guidance that looks concerning, but it's a faux number because Apple has talked a lot about their product pipeline but the forward guidance doesn't include any new products.

It was definitely below street expectations for revenue, and number of units sold. Tim even admits this on the call:"iPad sales met our expectations," Cook says, "but we realise they didn't meet many of yours."

So they beat EPS, but they were below estimates on shipping both iphones and ipads. It's only because they increased margins that they beat EPS.

Heh, on the conference call, someone asked them why they beat their gross margin guidance for the 3rd quarter in a row, when these are supposed to be realistic numbers now.

Hardly, I think most people are responding negatively to the fact that their Q4 projections look exactly like what they did in Q4 of last year (http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2013/10/28Apple-Reports-Four...), so staying flat during the holiday / back-to-school season year over year probably got some people worried that the magic is fading. They did payback nearly 50 cents a share in dividends, so its not all crazy times.

Edit: Oh, and that ipad number I missed that the first time, they could really use something magical there.

Apple's fiscal Q4 is from July - September, not the holiday quarter.

Nicely splits back to school and end of the year buying between two quarters. Given their back-to-school quarter is going to be flat suggests they have less confidence in their 'send your kid to school with a Mac' campaign.

Personally I was all set to get the large form factor iPad but will get a Samsung Note Pro instead.

What's convincing you to choose Samsung Note Pro instead of an iPad?

Personally, I'm looking at Microsoft Surface Pro 2 instead of any tablet, because it's not just a tablet, but an x86 PC that can run Ubuntu (yes, 2, not 3, because larger size and loss of Wacom digitizer while retaining the same hardware don't look like improvements to me). I even think Apple will present an "iPad Pro" along these lines, this year, with a killer feature of being able to run OS X apps. I don't live in Apple-land and I don't want that, but it should be popular.

The 12" screen and the better digitizing pen. My application is much more notes/sketch focused. I've got several different stylii for the iPad, none of them is as nice as the Note's pen. I like the larger size so that I can see more of the sketch even while zoomed, I don't care about having it in my pocket. The contenders were something like a Yoga 2 pro, the Note pro, or something from Apple. They don't have anything in that space so for that reason, they're out.

What kind of digitizer is there in Samsung Note Pro?

If you are so flexible as to consider Android, iOS and Windows, you should consider Microsoft Surface Pro 3, too. I am really interested to know your opinion; my email is in the profile if you will actually look into it and decide to share. For me, Microsoft tablets are an overseas shipping order away, so I hesitate a lot before buying a completely new piece of hardware.

Clearly Apple is dying.