$AAPL QUARTER (ended Sept 26, John Ternus’s first call as CEO) Results: net sales were $114.5B (+12%), beating about $113.4B. Diluted EPS was $2.10 versus $1.99 expected, with tariff refunds adding about 5 cents (so about $2.05 without them, my arithmetic). Products: iPhone was $57.6B (+17.5%) on only eight days of iPhone 18 Pro sales. Mac grew 24%, Greater China 21%, and Services reached a record $31.6B (+9.8%, 75.9% gross margin). Weak spots: iPad fell 10%, Wearables 8%, and Japan 1%. R&D rose 32%, so operating income grew only 9.9% and operating margin slipped to 31.1%. December-quarter guide: revenue growth of 7–10% beats the roughly 6.1% consensus and is billed as a record quarter. Gross margin is guided to 45–46% on memory costs and the Siri AI ramp, about 2–3 points below this quarter’s 47.9%. Cash: full-year free cash flow was $136B (+38%, my arithmetic) with capex only 1.9% of revenue. Apple returned $102B to shareholders, and net cash rose to about $57B. More Upcoming Deep Dive......today!