Reprinted from TidBITS#839/24-Jul-06 with permission. Copyright (C) 2006, TidBITS. All rights reserved. http://www.tidbits.com/ MailBITS/24-Jul-06 ------------------ **Apple Reports $472 Million Q3-2006 Profit** -- Apple continued its succession of profitable quarters by announcing a $472 million profit for the third financial quarter of 2006, based on revenues of $4.37 billion. Those rosy numbers arrive thanks to sales of 1,327,000 Macintosh computers (compared to 1.1 million last quarter, and up 12 percent over the year-ago quarter), and 8,111,000 iPods (which is slightly down from the 8.5 million iPods shipped last quarter, but 32 percent better than a year ago). [JLC] **TidBITS Back End Changes Coming Soon** -- After many years of using the same production, issue generation, and distribution tools, we're going to be switching in the next week or two to a new system that we've been working on. I'll explain more about what we've done and why once it's in place, but for now I merely want to give you all a heads up that the next issue - assuming everything tests out properly - will likely be sent through the new system and will look just a bit different. In the unlikely event that something goes wrong, please don't tell us about it, since we'll be watching with test accounts and will post any necessary status reports and explanations on our ExtraBITS weblog. That's what I did last week when a small percentage of readers received a Web Crossing-generated notification that the issue had been released, instead of the actual issue itself. I've resolved that problem within our user account database. [ACE] **Adam & Tonya Talk About Book Publishing in MacNotables** -- Tonya and I had another interesting discussion with Chuck Joiner on our MacNotables podcast last week - about what it's like to package a printed book. For those who don't know, there are two basic ways that computer books are created. Normally, an author writes into Word and takes screenshots and sends it all in to the publisher to be edited and laid out. That may seem fairly straightforward, but we've long been using the second approach, in which we do all the layout and editing necessary to provide the publisher with a finished book (we even pay for indexing, though we always hire a professional indexer). Although there's seemingly more work involved in packaging, it's all up front, so there are no nasty surprises caused by errors introduced during editing or layout, and the royalties are higher. So if you're interested in learning about how some of your favorite computer books are made - it's a lot more work than it seems from the outside - give the podcast a listen. [ACE] **DealBITS Drawing: Image Tricks Winners** -- Congratulations to Paul Richards of gmail.com, Leonard R. Wines of winesland.net, Gary Wheeler of fairpoint.net, Ezra Nathan of blueyonder.co.uk, David Mackler of mac.com, and Joerg (whose username is, amusingly enough in German, ichwillgewinnen), whose entries were chosen randomly in last week's DealBITS drawing and who each received a copy of BeLight Software's Image Tricks Pro, worth $9.95. Thanks to the 510 people who entered, and keep an eye out for future DealBITS drawings! [ACE] .