The biggest mystery to come out of Apple’s Q3 earnings conference call Monday — besides the state of Steve Jobs’ health — was the “future product transition” that CFO Peter Oppenheimer mentioned as one of the three reasons he expects the company’s gross margins to fall from 34.1% to 31.5% over the next three months.

For a company that doesn’t talk about future products, Apple spent a lot of time Monday talking about this one. Oppenheimer mentioned this product transition at least four times during the call, hinting at “state-of-the-art products at pricepoints our competitors can’t match” and adding coyly — and illogically — that he couldn’t talk about it.

So, of course, that set off a round of overnight speculation. See, for example, here.

Could it be a revamped Apple TV? No, that’s a product that sells in numbers too small to account for the hundreds of millions of dollars it takes to do that kind of damage to Apple’s gross margins.

Could it be the long-awaited tablet Mac? No, that would be a new product, not a product transition.

Could it be a revamped iPod line, with iPod touch-like controls and solid state drives to replace the old hard drives? That’s more likely. After all, Oppenheimer warned of the same kind of product transition costs at this time last year, and what came out of it was the iPod touch.

Could it have something to do with the MacBook line? That’s what Piper Jaffray’s Gene Munster suggested in a note to clients Tuesday morning. Overhauls of the MacBook and MacBook Pro are overdue, he pointed out, and delivering them just before school starts — perhaps at prices starting at $999 — would make a lot of sense.

On the other hand, Apple (AAPL) is a company that thrives on dropping hints and then clamming up, letting fevered speculation do the work of softening up the market.

Maybe that’s what Peter Oppenheimer — taking a lesson from his CEO — was really up to.

The prohibitively expensive solid-state version of Apple’s MacBook Air is suddenly 16% less so.

While Apple watchers were focused on the upcoming launch of the iPhone 3G, the company quietly lopped $500 off the 64-GB SSD MacBook Air, reducing it overnight from $3,098 to $2,598.

The price cut, just six months after the product was introduced, is at least partly the result of Apple’s transition from expensive single-level cell flash to multi-level cell technology (see here) and steadily falling NAND flash memory prices across the board. But it may also reflect increased competition in the thin notebook market and sluggish sales for the driveless version, which hasn’t quite delivered either the speed or power savings customers had expected.

Kudos to AppleInsider’s Slash Lane, who seems to have been first to note the price cut with a post published at 1:00 p.m. ET.

Special mention to MacRumors‘ Arnold Kim, who caught Apple (AAPL) doing the right thing for customers who ordered the Air at one price and will receive it at another:

To Our Valued Apple Customer:

Apple has announced a price drop for a component(s) of the MacBook Air that you recently ordered. We have automatically adjusted your order to reflect the new lower price.

For up-to-date information on your order, please visit our Order Status website at . After your order is shipped, you can also obtain tracking information on this site.

Thank you for your shopping at the Apple Store.

Sincerely,
Apple Online Store Support (link)

There’s a Sherman Adams-style political controversy heating up in South America in which the role of the vicuna fur coat is played by a MacBook Air.

The star is Cristina Kirchner, the president of Argentina — the second woman to hold that office (after Isabel Martinez de Peron).

The supporting role is played by Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim, the second richest man in the world, who controls Telefonos de Mexico (TMX) and thus telecommunications over much of Latin America. His name came up in association with Apple earlier this month when Steve Jobs chose his wireless spinoff, America Movil (AMX), to bring the iPhone to 16 countries in Central America, South America and the Caribbean. (see here)

The story begins when billionaire Slim gave President Kirchner the gift of a slim, elegant MacBook Air. The Argentine press got hold of a photograph of the event and began stirring up trouble for La Pinguina, as they have nicknamed her (because of her husband’s roots in southern Argentina).

The issue, for several Argentinian newspapers (see here, for example, in Spanish) is whether a MacBook Air, which can fetch more than AR$9,600 in the devalued Argentinian dollar ($3,096 in U.S. dollars), should be considered a “luxury item” — something the President is forbidden by article 256 of the Penal Code to accept as a personal gift.

The code is usually invoked for really big items, like the $120,000 red Ferrari one of her predecessors, Carlos Menem, was forced to turn over to the state.

At least one Argentinian lawyer has come to Kirchner’s defense, arguing that by comparison a MacBook Air might be considered just a “courtesy,” a thing of “little value.” (see here)

Maybe in Argentina.

Anway, thanks for the tip goes to Investor Village’s boxerconan, who sees the whole thing as more free publicity for Apple (AAPL). Thanks also to macenstein for the link to the photograph. For more on the story, see huibert-aalbers.com.

MacRumors has issued an update of its immensely useful Buyer’s Guide — a consumer-oriented cheat sheet that tracks the update cycle of Apple’s product line and offers informed opinions about whether you should go ahead buy that MacBook Pro you’ve been lusting after or wait for the next model. As MacRumors put it:

Apple updates their products in a very consistent manner. A Mac comes out at a certain price with certain features. The price and features of that particular Mac stay exactly the same throughout the lifespan of the product. So, if a customer buys on Day #1, they are getting the fastest/newest technology for the dollar. The problem, however, is that 8 months later, on the day prior to its refresh, that Mac costs the exact same money, but contains 8 month old technology. (link)

Although based on rumors and second-hand reports, the Guide is pretty dependable, especially since Apple (AAPL) switched to Intel chips. Intel (INTC) is quite open about its product plans, and Apple tends to switch to their newest processors in a fairly predictable timeframe. (Although as MacRumors notes, Intel’s switch to the Nehalem microarchitecture, due late this year, could stretch out some Apple product cycles.)

To see the full 2008-2009 Buyer’s Guide, click here. This is a summary of their recommendations:

• iPod classic: Buy only if you need it - Approaching the end of a cycle
• iPod touch: Neutral - Mid product cycle
• iPod nano: Buy only if you need it - Approaching the end of a cycle
• iPod shuffle: Buy - Product recently updated
• Mac mini: Don’t Buy - Updates soon
• Mac Pro: Neutral - Mid product cycle
• MacBook: Buy - Product recently updated
• MacBook Pro: Buy - Product recently updated
• iPhone: Buy only if you need it - Approaching the end of a cycle
• LCDs: Don’t Buy - Updates soon
• Xserve: Buy - Product recently updated

There’s lots more information in the full Buyer’s Guide, including historical release dates, days since update and links to recent news.

One caveat: you take a risk when you buy a computer on Day #1, as MacRumors suggests. You might want to monitor Apple’s discussion boards for few weeks to see what problems emerge. Let the company and the users who like to live on the bleeding edge work out the kinks before you buy.

This was a week for unsoliticited celebrity Apple (AAPL) endorsements.

First there was Charlie Rose, falling on his face to save his MacBook Air. Then Martha Stewart, posing her French bulldog Sharkey in front of the “razor-thin” machine.

And now, via Newsbusters.org, former Bush political advisor Karl Rove. Here he is, interviewed by Matthew Sheffield, talking about his iPhone and his MacBook Air:

NB: All right, I’ve got just one more quick question for you. Last time I saw you, you’d just gotten an iPhone. How’s that working out for you?

ROVE: I love it. My life has changed. I have a shred of coolness. I’ve got my 3,500 people in my addressbook on the phone, I can sync my calendar. I keep track of my modest little stock investments. I can check the weather of my house in Washington, my house in Florida, my boy at school, my hunt-lease in south Texas. I can surf the web, I’m just–I get part of my email there.

I mean it is just shocking how much better, how much more productive I am. I no longer carry around a giant address book, if I don’t have my calendar close at hand, I can quickly check it out of my– I don’t have to carry, I used to carry several notecards, now it’s just as easy to scribble on my little notepad, I can take photographs and forward them on immediately, it’s just remarkable.

NB: All right. Well it sounds like Steve Jobs should call you up as a spokesman.

ROVE: There we go, there we go. And not only that, I also have the Mac Book Air which is really cool. Even my wife is jealous of my MacBook Air.

NB: Ahh, well it sounds like you’ll have to get her one then.

ROVE: No I don’t, no I don’t. I’m the only cool one in the family with a MacBook Air.

For more of the Rove interview, including his take on left-leaning blogs (”… most of them are hate-filled, obscenity-clogged rants of anger and hatred”) click here.

Thanks to superbaka at TMO’s Apple Finance Board for the tip. Bush/Rove photo by Win McNamee / Getty via Time.com.

With less than two weeks before the end of Apple’s March quarter, Shaw Wu of American Technology Research expects the company to shake off the doldrums that are dragging down the rest of the U.S. economy.

“Our sense is that the Mac business is recession proof,” he writes in a report to clients issued Thursday morning. Based on his supply chain checks, Wu sees good news throughout Apple’s (AAPL) product line:

• Rather than the 38 percent year-to-year growth in Macintosh unit sales he had earlier predicted, he now thinks growth may be closer to 42 percent.
• After a strong start and then a lull, he sees Macbook Air sales picking up rapidly. “Customers are attracted to its super thin form factor and do not seem to mind some of its limitations.”
• He’s seeing a bump in iPod sales following the shuffle price cut, and now expects iPods to come in at the high end of his 9.5-10 million unit range (but lower than the Street’s 10.8 consensus).
• He sees a pause in iPhone sales following the well-regarded SDK announcement as customers wait for the June release of iPhone 2.0. He’s modeling 11 million iPhones for the year, slightly ahead of Apple’s 10 million target.
• Falling prices in component parts should sweeten Apple’s March report, due out April 23, and Wu is raising his estimates accordingly. He writes: “For the March quarter, we are now modeling $7 billion and $1.10 in EPS (from $6.9 billion and $1.02) vs. consensus of $6.92 billion and $1.05 and its guidance of $6.8 billion and $0.94.”

What is it about Apple computers that makes them run so hot?

Complaints about overheating notebooks — Apple doesn’t call them laptops anymore for reasons that become obvious once you use them for a few minutes — surfaced soon after the release of both the MacBook Pro in early 2006 and the MacBook later that spring.

Now the problem is the new MacBook Air. Despite assurances from Apple (AAPL) reps at MacWorld that it ran cooler than its bulkier predecessors, Apple’s discussion boards are filled with messages about fans running a full throttle, machines overheating and occasional lock-ups. As of Thursday afternoon, the topic “MacBook Air Overheating” had been viewed 3,135 times and a second topic, “MacBook Air intermittent freezing problem,” had drawn 2,541 views.

“I spoke to Apple and the first thing I was advised to do was to remove all cables and the battery!” one user reported. Whoever was manning that help line apparently was not aware that the battery on the MacBook Air can’t be removed.

On Monday, Apple issued a software update — MacBook Air SMC Update 1.0 — that “fine tunes the speed and operation of the internal fan,” but reports of its effectiveness are mixed. One user said his machine had been relatively quiet since the upgrade. Another said it “didn’t work at all.” Others reported that when they tried to install it they were told that their MacBook Air was already up to date.

The broader problem, one suspects, is that Apple has once again put design considerations ahead of performance and pushed the new machine’s heat tolerance just a bit too far.

A month after it went of sale, demand for the MacBook Air is surprisingly strong, according to Ars Technica, which surveyed stores across the U.S. over the weekend and found supplies of the $1,799 notebook computer ($3,098 for the solid-state drive version) thin or nonexistent.

“No Air for you,” is the motto in and around Boston, writes Ars‘ Ken Fisher. “An employee at the Burlington store told me that demand has been extremely high, admitting that some customers even ponied up for the far more expensive MacBook Air SSD because they stayed in stock longer.” (link)

Despite its limitations (shortage of ports, nonremovable battery, etc.) the machine was also out of stock in New York City, Chicago, San Francisco, and Los Angeles, according to Ars readers. In Indianapolis there are “more than enough” Airs to meet demand, writes Fisher, but in London’s Regent Street store they are “selling out the moment they come in.”

Of course, empty shelves can be caused either by high demand or short supplies, and without any sales figures from Apple (AAPL) it’s hard to tell which it is. One sign in favor of strong demand, however, is that the Apple store’s “Top Sellers” list puts the MacBook Air at No. 1, ahead of the MacBook, iMac, Leopard, MacBook Pro and AppleCare. That’s especially impressive given that the MacBook and MacBook Pro lines got refreshed just last week.

According to Fisher, the machine sells itself once people put their hands it.

A recurring theme in our discussions with the folks at the Apple Store (who just love to gab, it must be a job requirement) is that the MacBook Air is a switcher device. The perception that this puppy is the leanest, meanest portable there is has road warriors starry-eyed. When we feigned amazement at the product being out of stock in multiple locations, we were told time and time again that demand for the Air is increasing as people see it in action, in person. Of course, these are paid Apple employees telling us this, and they have a sales job to do. At the same time, we’ve heard plenty of similar anecdotes in the past week. (link)

Interest in the lightweight MacBook Air is high, but sales are modest, according to a survey of Apple (AAPL) resellers conducted by Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster.

“Customers are more curious but less willing to buy the MacBook Air than they were the original MacBook,” Munster writes in a report to clients issued this morning. “We believe that 16% of Macs by the end of calendar year 2008 will be MacBook Air.”

Munster and his team spoke to 20 Apple specialists on Monday. The impression they got was that MacBook Air sales are coming over and above the MacBook’s, and not cannibalizing Apple’s most popular model. He writes:

According to the resellers we spoke to, the MacBook Air has a smaller but separate target market than the MacBook. Most described the market as a group that prioritizes mobility and is less price sensitive than the MacBook market. One reseller referred to MacBook Air as the first “Executive Mac.”

Munster expects Mac sales overall to fall somewhat after the white-hot Christmas quarter, which is in line with the guidance Apple gave in its last quarterly earnings report. He’s modeling an 18 percent drop. However, the resellers he spoke with say on average that Mac sales are flat — which if it holds up would be very good news for the company. Specifically, 35 percent of those surveyed said Mac sales are up, 45 percent said they were down and 20 percent expected them to be flat for the March quarter.

“Our January was very strong,” one reseller told Munster, “and February is starting out strong. Our March quarter will likely be better than our December quarter.”

Munster notes, however, that the salespeople he spoke with have a better grasp on product interest and day-to-day sales than they do the big picture of the business.

Apple’s (AAPL) price charts are a thing of marketing beauty: logical, symmetrical, easy to take in at a glance.

Take, for example, the latest Apple Store chart for the iPod touch:

Pretty, huh?

On second glance, however, there seems to be something wrong here. Why does a $100 bump in price buy you 8 GB of memory in the the first instance, but an extra 16 GB in the second? Look at the new iPhone prices:

Again, $100 for 8 GB of extra memory.

Why does Apple charge $12.50 per gigabyte in all models except the 32 GB iPod touch, where it’s $6.25 per gig?

Simple retail economics, you say. The more units you buy, the less each unit costs.

OK, then answer me this: Why does Apple charge $999 for the 64 GB solid-state drive in the MacBook Air? If you do the math, that’s $15.60 per gig of NAND Flash memory, more than double what Apple charges for the same stuff in the new iPod touch. No doubt Samsung charges Apple more for the new and relatively rare 64 GB form factor, but not that much more.

The RAM pricing anomaly becomes even more surprising when you start asking what that extra $999 buys you.

The answer is not very much, according to an in-depth review that Ars Technica posted yesterday. In side-by-side benchmarks comparing hard-disk-drive (HDD) and solid-state-drive (SSD) models of the MacBook Air, Jacqui Cheng reports that while the SSD booted up 12 seconds faster was a bit quicker in random disk tests, it actually performed worse in sequential disk tests and general writing to the disk. And it got beaten across the board by the MacBook and MacBookPro. See, for example, the application test reproduced below:

For the full Ars Technica “No Spin” review, see here.

Steve Jobs, of course, is a marketing genius. If he charges more for less, it’s probably because he knows his customers and knows that he can get it. And if it turns out he’s wrong, you can bet he’ll change those price charts in a heartbeat.