BlackBerry was sold for $4.7 billion or about what Apple made on iPhone sales last weekend.

The chart says it all.

An SEC Form 8K alerting the commission that those 9 million sales represents a material change in the company’s prospects for its fiscal fourth quarter, which ends Saturday. “Apple expects total company revenue for the fourth fiscal quarter to be near the high end of the previously provided range of $34 billion to $37 billion,” the company wrote, “and expects gross margin to be near the high end of the previously provided range of 36% to 37%.”

Sales are so over-the-top great, the company has to tell the SEC.

Microsoft is trying, but I just don’t see it working out for them. The biggest problem isn’t battery life, it’s that customers don’t want the Surface.

New York City’s Police Department is looking to cut back crime by informing iPhone-owning residents that they should update their devices to the latest version of iOS in order to obtain new security features designed to thwart potential thieves.

Apple today announced it has sold a record-breaking nine million new iPhone® 5s and iPhone 5c models, just three days after the launch of the new iPhones on September 20. In addition, more than 200 million iOS devices are now running the completely redesigned iOS 7, making it the fastest software upgrade in history. Both iPhone 5s and iPhone 5c are available in the US, Australia, Canada, China, France, Germany, Hong Kong, Japan, Puerto Rico, Singapore and the UK. Demand for iPhone 5s has exceeded the initial supply, and many online orders are scheduled to be shipped in the coming weeks.

“This is our best iPhone launch yet―more than nine million new iPhones sold―a new record for first weekend sales,” said Tim Cook, Apple’s CEO. “The demand for the new iPhones has been incredible, and while we’ve sold out of our initial supply of iPhone 5s, stores continue to receive new iPhone shipments regularly. We appreciate everyone’s patience and are working hard to build enough new iPhones for everyone.”

Wow.

Getting ready to sell or give away your iOS device? Bookmark this page. The instructions are simple enough, but handy to have this page around when the time comes.

I’m a math geek, have been all my life. So I was delighted when I saw this one. Had no idea the Simpsons’ writing staff were so mathematically inclined. Here are a few examples.

The episode climaxes with Tabitha appearing on the Jumbo Vision screen at the Springfield stadium, where she publicly proclaims her love for Buck. More important, just before she appears on the screen, it displays a question that asks the baseball fans in the crowd to guess the attendance.

The screen displays three multiple choice options; 8,128, 8,208 and 8,191. These digits might seem arbitrary and innocuous, but in fact they represent a perfect number, a narcissistic number and a Mersenne prime.

The article goes on to give the details on each class of numbers. What amazes me is how much work they put in to create a short chunk of animation that few, if any, in the audience will notice. That’s craft. Or insanity.

Here’s another example (and my personal favorite). Note that the carat (^) symbol stands for “raised to the power of”, as in 2^5 = 32:

Professor Andrew Wiles (now Sir Andrew Wiles) worked in secrecy for seven years to fulfil a childhood dream and build a proof that confirmed that Fermat was right, inasmuch as the following equation has no solution: x^n + y^n = z^n, for n > 2. It is neither necessary to understand the proof nor to examine the equation in detail, except I should stress again that both Wiles and Fermat claimed, indeed proved, that this equation has no solutions, yet Homer’s blackboard proves the opposite!

3987^12 + 4365^12 = 4472^12.

Check it for yourself on your phone calculator and you will find that the equation balances!

I’ll leave it to you to figure out the fly in the ointment. Or just read the article.

A fantastic free resource. There’s something for everyone in this list. Some of my all-time favorite films alongside a bunch of unknown works (to me, at least) by great directors such as Quentin Tarantino and David Lynch. Yum.

LinkedIn is being sued by customers claiming:

the company appropriated their identities for marketing purposes by hacking into their external e-mail accounts and downloading contacts’ addresses.

That’s a pretty serious charge. Given the process by which LinkedIn grows their user base (an expanding tree of referrals), you might be tempted to see this as true. I’m skeptical. Seems so easy to detect. A foolish move, if the charge is true. I hope this is not the case. We shall see.

Here’s LinkedIn’s public response to the suit.

Samsung sent out a film crew to film the excitement and anticipation of the crowds waiting for their new iPhones. The most telling part of the article was this quote:

“Other companies release new phones, but there’s not as much passion and heat [from buyers],” a Korea-based producer from Samsung Broadcasting Center/Cheil Worldwide, who asked not to be named, told CNET at the iPhone launch. “It’s only Apple. Why? We’re curious.”

Ask us, we’ll tell you.

I find this sort of thing fascinating.

Healthy Choice was having a promotion on their frozen entrées section. The offer was as follows: for every 10 bar codes of their product a person sent in, they’d be awarded 500 Air Miles. However, the company had an early bird stipulation that people who redeemed the offer within the first month of the competition would receive double that, meaning a person could potentially receive 1000 Air Miles for buying just 10 of their entrées.

Upon catching wind of the deal, David scoured his local supermarkets to see which, if any products offered the best potential return. After some legwork, he found what he was looking for- a discount grocery chain that was selling individual chocolate pudding cups for 25 cents each. This meant that for a measly $2.50, he could get 1000 Air Miles.

He spent $3,000 on pudding, donated all the pudding, then turned in the bar codes and got more than a million air miles (about $150K in value). Loophole!

This article has some excellent suggestions for steps you can take to improve your battery life under iOS 7. I’ve played around with these for a few days and can tell you that these have made a huge difference in my battery usage.

The two changes I think made the most difference for me (your mileage may vary) were setting my brightness to 50% (still plenty bright) and reducing the motion of the user interface.

With the latter, I do lose the parallax effect, which I do miss, so I’m going to turn that setting off so I get parallax back, see how that affects my battery life. Note that this is the same setting that addressed Shawn’s motion effects post from yesterday.

There’s a new rule in hockey that mandates a two minute penalty if a player takes off his own helmet prior to engaging in a fight. And then this happened.

Two players, Krys Barch and Brett Gallant, were about to get into a bit of a scrape-up, when they very purposely took each others helmets off. Really happened. I love hockey.

BlackBerry has halted the planned rollout of their BlackBerry Messenger (BBM) app for iPhone and Android, and pulled it from those regional App Stores that already launched it, like New Zealand.

There are just no words.

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How to start up a Boeing 737:

Not nearly as easy as strapping in and turning the key!

Curtis Rush at the Toronto Star has done a fabulous job of doing absolutely nothing worthwhile. As John Gruber puts it, this article is “Mind-bogglingly misinformed.”

Quartz:

…if you’ve downloaded Apple’s iOS 7 you could be using Multi-path TCP already.

Multi-path TCP allows your phone to send data by whatever way it’s connected to the internet, whether that’s Wi-Fi, 3G or ethernet. This is the first time that this new means of connecting to the internet has appeared in a commercial product.

Stuff:

A major change in Apple’s iOS 7 update was its sleek, minimal aesthetic; however, the amount of motion now found within is anything but minimal.

The net result: “It feels to me like the whole screen is moving, and it generates a sort of motion sickness. I feel dizzy and can feel the very beginnings of nausea kicking in.”

It’s not as bad as full on motion sickness for me but I do find the animations to be annoying eye candy I wish I could toggle off.

There have been a number of posts with excerpts from this interview, but this is a more complete Q&A. Thoughtful responses, nice long interview.

One billion dollars in 3 days. Wow. For comparison, it took Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 16 days to hit $1B, back in January 2012. Then Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 hit $1B in 15 days this past December. 3 days is astonishing.

Grand Theft Auto has been keeping Take-Two afloat during the down times, as the series has an extremely long tail (the volume of sales over time following release). Not only does a new release spike revenues, but it also incentivizes gamers to investigate the back catalog (sometimes spurring purchases of already owned games on new platforms). GTA V will be even more significant should the title see staggered releases on PC and next-generation platforms (as I suspect it will). At this point, Call of Duty is going to have a nearly impossible time beating GTA’s sales this year, ending a four-year streak.

With numbers like these, it is no wonder that Apple has added support for game controllers into iOS 7. Will game controller support be the force that erodes the chasm between iOS devices and traditional consoles like the Xbox and PlayStation? Time will tell.

An annual gathering of technologists passionate about creating great things.

I’ll be speaking at this conference next week in Chicago. Join me and a lot of other great speakers—tickets are on sale until midnight tonight Pacific time.

I love that Tim Cook did this. What a great surprise for folks queueing up to buy the iPhone 5s. Phil Schiller and Eddie Cue also made the rounds of the Palo Alto area stores. Fantastic.

This week, Jim is joined by Back to Work’s Merlin Mann to talk about hands-on experiences with Apple’s new iPhone 5s and 5c and iOS 7.

Including a deep dive on Touch ID; how easier security measures could boost iTunes sales; Jim’s new-found photo skills with the 5s camera; what Jim looks for in the wiring under his wood; and more.

Time is running out for BlackBerry. The company announced on Friday that it is cutting 4,500 jobs and that it will report a net operating loss of roughly $1 billion in its next quarterly earnings report.

I certainly feel bad for the people that lost their jobs, but we all knew this was coming.

Seriously, everyone wants an iPhone.