You didn’t hear anything about it at Macworld Expo, at least from the mouths of Philip Schiller or any other Apple employee. During last week’s session with financial analysts, Apple’s executives weren’t even asked the question, and they felt no need to volunteer a response.

Indeed, the rest of the world is nevertheless observing the 25th anniversary of the introduction of the Apple Macintosh. It was presaged in 1984 by one of the most famous TV ads in recent memory, directed by Ridley Scott, and surely drawing attention to a device that was unlike any other.

In those days, daring the suggest that you could get serious work done with a personal computer that used a relatively friendly graphical user interface was a heresy. Real PC users worked in the command line, and pointing and clicking was just a whole lot of silliness that would not survive the test of time.

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In line with the expectations of the financial community, Microsoft’s earnings are slowing, and layoffs of 5,000 employees are in the offing. Can it get any worse for the world’s largest software maker?

In announcing the widely-expected decision, CEO Steve Ballmer blamed an 11% drop in quarterly profits on the tragic state of the PC industry. That, of course, is probably true as far as Windows is concerned. No doubt the current economic crisis contributed to Microsoft’s woes, but it’s also true that, despite dire predictions, Apple managed to hit record earnings during the last quarter.

While sales of Mac desktops were down, it simply meant that customers were choosing notebooks instead. So overall Mac sales remained surprisingly high. Indeed, it does appear that Apple succeeded, in part, by taking away sales from Microsoft. That’s something that Ballmer is never going to admit.

Even worse for Microsoft, Apple didn’t succeed by undercutting PCs on price. In fact, Apple gets most of its Mac sales from products that cost well over a grand, which is certainly far above the sweet spot in PC pricing. So much for the claims that the alleged “Apple Tax” would ultimately do the company in.

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All right, just yesterday I was suggesting that Apple would record good sales for Macs and the iPhone, and, based on a preliminary survey, suggested iPod sales might decline slightly. But, as usual, Apple made the industry analysts and Wall Street money people look foolish.

In the final quarter of 2008, which is actually the first fiscal quarter for the company, Apple reported total sales of $10.17 billion, and a record profit of $1.61 billion, or $1.78 per diluted share. A poll from Thomson First Call of financial analysts came up with $9.75 billion sales, or $1.39 per diluted share. Apple not only beat the street as usual, but continued its amazing growth curve.

In all, a total of 2,524,000 Macs were sold, which comes in at a nine percent growth rate compared to last year. Of these, 71% were notebooks. What’s more, despite expectations of lower sales, there was a slight increase in iPod sales, about three percent, with a record 22,727,000 sold. But the increase was solely due to international sales; U.S. sales had a three percent decline. Apple also moved 4,363,000 iPhones, an increase of 88 percent over the previous year.

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For a company that seems a little down in the dumps these days, this week’s report on Apple Inc.’s quarterly financials is still eagerly awaited with both trepidation and anticipation. Probably with equal doses of both.

The cloud hanging over the company’s stock price is, of course, the health of CEO Steve Jobs and ongoing concerns whether his five-month sick leave may become permanent. Thus, the price drifts ever lower and lower, and it may take a lot of optimistic news to stop the hemorrhaging and set things on the upward path all over again.

The problem is, of course, that the stock market doesn’t necessarily recognize reality. A negative forecast or rumor about a potentially unfavorable development, such as Jobs’ medical condition, can send the price spiraling even if the information has no factual basis.

Take that CNN blog rumor, a few months back, that Jobs had a serious heart attack. In the space of a few minutes, Apple’s market cap fell by several billions of dollars. The story, of course, was untrue, and even with the more recent revelations that his illness is more serious than previously admitted, there’s no evidence that it is related to his heart.

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