Author: Dan Moren

Scientists might argue that the root cause of Earth’s rotation is angular momentum, but come on: We all know it’s money, plain and simple. We don’t sit down every three months to hear Apple talk about physics, after all.

On Wednesday, Apple CEO Tim Cook will take to the speakerphone to talk about the company’s most recent financial quarter, cleverly dubbed “the second quarter of fiscal year 2014.”

As always, Macworld will be on hand at 2 p.m. PT/5 p.m. ET with live coverage and analysis of the call. But if you just can’t wait, and you want to prep a little, here are a few of the hot topics we expect to get covered during Apple’s announcement and the ensuing melee of financial analyst questions.

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If you were looking to try out Office for iPad, but didn’t precisely feel like shelling out the full $10-per-month or $100-per-year for an Office 365 Home plan, then may Microsoft interest you in a slight discount? The company this week launched a new Office 365 Personal Plan at a lower price point.

Not that much lower, though: The Personal plan runs $7 per month, or $70 for a year-long subscription. And that lower price comes with more restrictions: Unlike the Home plan, which allows you to run Office 365 on 5 PCs or Macs and 5 Windows tablets or iPads, the Personal plan—as the name suggests—works only on a single PC or Mac in addition to one tablet. If you’re a student, you also have access to a four-year Office 365 University subscription for $80, which offers most of the same benefits.

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Worried Siri didn’t get enough love in iOS 7? Apple’s not done with the intelligent assistant just yet, if one of its newer acquisitions is any indication. As first reported by TechCrunch, Cupertino last year picked up U.K.-based Novauris Technologies, a firm that specializes in speech recognition.

Apple confirmed the acquisition to TechCrunch, though as usual it didn’t deign to give any further information about the deal. Novauris itself was essentially a rebuilt version of the research and development team at Dragon Systems U.K., the British subsidiary of Dragon Systems, which created voice recognition and dictation apps like Dragon NaturallySpeaking and Dragon Dictate. Dragon itself is now owned by Nuance—which provides speech recognition for Siri.

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Some Apple news every day may not keep the doctor away, but it will at least provide some reading material. Here are the latest news stories making the rounds on Tuesday:

Starting Today, Find NPR Shows And Newscasts On iTunes Radio

iTunes Radio has added its first news station, National Public Radio. It’ll run 24 hours a day and broadcast shows like Morning Edition, All Things Considered, and the hourly newscasts. Streams for actual local stations are expected to arrive later this spring—no news on whether pledge drives will accompany them.

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The demise of the iPad 2 isn’t the only change Apple made to its product offerings on Tuesday. While it’s not available in the U.S.—currently, anyway—some of Apple’s international stores are now quietly offering an 8GB version of the iPhone 5c.

The model, which is available in several European countries (the UK, France, and Germany) as well as Australia and China, seems to come in at about 8 to 9 percent cheaper than the 16GB model. Of course, in most of those countries Apple sells the Phone unlocked and unsubsidized by local carriers, meaning that the prices are much higher than what those of us here in the U.S. are accustomed to.

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There’s plenty of back and forth about whether Apple’s recently announced CarPlay, which will arrive in some vehicles later this year, will combat distracted driving or just make it worse. But there’s one implication of CarPlay that actually gives me some hope about the disappointing state of car electronics: Apple’s track record as a software developer.

Ever had the software in your car’s radio/navigation/media console updated? It’s not easy and it’s not fast. When I got my latest car a couple of years ago, the radio had a bug where the right channel of stereo sound was played over both speakers when streaming Bluetooth audio. Not only did it take six months for a fix to get released, but updating the software meant a trip to the dealer and a two-hour wait while, I can only assume, they uploaded the software bit by bit over a reel-to-reel tape.

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Apple financial conference calls will start to sound a little different later this year, as the company announced on Tuesday that chief financial officer and senior vice president Peter Oppenheimer will retire, effective the end of September.

Oppenheimer, who first started at Apple in 1996, will be replaced by Luca Maestri, who currently serves as the company’s corporate controller and vice president of finance. Maestri will take over the CFO gig in June, and will assume the rest of Oppenheimer’s responsibilities over the remaining three months of the former executive’s tenure.

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Apple’s annual shareholder meeting is one of its most un-Apple-like gatherings. Attendance is limited to company shareholders and press, CEO Tim Cook and other executives often take questions, and attendees are asked to not take their electronic devices into the meeting. All of that adds up to an interesting trickle of information from a variety of sources around the Web, which we’ve collected for you in one easy-to-digest package.

Turn on the Apple TV

By all accounts, Cook spent a good chunk of time discussing the Apple TV on Friday, telling shareholders that the company had sold more than $1 billion worth of the set-top boxes (and related content) in the last year.

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For your edification (and in consideration of your valuable time) we’ve rounded up some of the most prominent stories making the rounds this Thursday morning.

Apple Makes Big Improvements In iOS Management Tools For Enterprise And Education

Despite its products’ popularity in enterprise and education, Apple’s faced plenty of challenges when it comes to widespread deployment. But the company’s now made some changes to improve its lot in those areas, with improvements to its Device Enrollment Program, Volume Purchase Program, and Apple ID for Students service. Among the refinements are a ‘zero touch’ setup for mobile devices, the ability to lock down devices once they’ve been configured, and a way to set up student Apple IDs for kids under 13. Educational technology expert Fraser Speirs has some more insight on how that will affect education in particular.

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What do fixes for critical security vulnerabilities, improvements to mail delivery, and new FaceTime features have in common? Well, they’re all in OS X 10.9.2, which arrived on Tuesday. It’s available in the Updates tab of the Mac App Store, and even if you’re among those who usually take a wait-and-see approach to system updates, this particular release is worth an expedient installation. 

That’s because of the recent SSL vulnerability, which is patched in the 10.9.2 update—that’s right, you can let out that breath you’ve been holding for the last four days since the flaw surfaced. In all likelihood, the gap between fixing the issue in iOS and OS X was so that Apple could get 10.9.2 out the door—though we can debate whether users would have been better served by a faster, smaller patch in advance of the OS X update. (Note that the SSL vulnerability didn’t apply to earlier versions of OS X.)

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