Great Quarter Not Good Enough at Apple

The company sold 1.1 million of its Macintosh computers in its second quarter, for $1.49 billion in sales. That compared favorably with the year-ago period, when the company sold 749,000 computers worth $1.16 billion.

But stock options did skew some of Apple's results in the quarter. The growth in earnings per share trailed significantly behind overall earnings growth because of the added shares.

Meanwhile, the company ended the quarter with $7.06 billion in cash and short-term investments, which was up $609 million from the end of the first quarter. While much of that gain was the result of the company's operations, some $287 million of it -- or 47% -- came from stock options exercises and the tax benefit associated with them, Oppenheimer said.