Apple Daily: Apple Earnings Report w/ Apple Watch Date, iOS Patch 8.1.3

It's quarterly report day at Apple, which means it's time once again for us to drop our jaws at the record amounts of cash Apple is raking in. (And while they were at it, they dropped some info on the Apple Watch's release date!)) If you're still bummed out about some lingering bugs in iOS, never fear — there's a patch for that.

Apple Reports Yet Another Record-Smashing Quarter

Apple released its quarterly earnings report for the first fiscal quarter of 2015 this afternoon, and true to recent fashion, the event was full of all kinds of smashed records and big numbers. In a single quarter, Apple sold a breathtaking 74.5 million iPhones and it generated a near-unimaginable $18 billion in profits.

Total revenue for the quarter reached $74.6 billion, which equates into $3.06 per diluted share. The massive push associated with the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus amounted to a 46 percent increase in year-over-year sales, and Mac sales reached an all-time high of 5.52 million units, representing a 14 percent year-over-year sales increase.

Alas, the iPad continued its slow decline with 21.4 million sales, falling down 18 percent from the previous year's Q1 report. But on the bright side for Apple, iTunes, the App Store, and other staples of the company's "Services" category brought in a record $4.8 billion.

The call was also notable in that Apple CEO Tim Cook and other executives took the time to relay some other impressive figures, such as how Apple's sold more than one billion total iOS devices to date. In addition, Cook dispelled the long-standing rumor that the Apple Watch would debut in March; instead, he says, it's set to ship in April.

In related news, earlier in the day analyst firm Canalys revealed that the popularity of the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus helped make Apple the brand with the most smartphone shipments to China. That not only puts the Cupertino company ahead of homegrown competitors like Xiaomi and Huawei, but also ahead of longtime Korean rival Samsung.

Apple Releases Bug-Fixing Update for iOS

Apple today released iOS 8.1.3, which contains a number of important bug fixes, including a particularly nasty remedy for a bug that kept many users from entering their Apple ID passwords for Messages and FaceTime. In addition, the patch reportedly fixes the issue that was preventing multitasking gestures from working on the iPad, and another that prevented Spotlight from listing results from apps.

Elsewhere, the patch lessens the space needed to install an iOS update, and you can also access new "configuration options for education standardized testing." Unfortunately, as noted by MacRumors, the patch apparently doesn't fix the "GMT bug," which has caused calendar syncing issues for some users by inaccurately listing times.

Follow this article's writer, Leif Johnson, on Twitter.