It may be a bad economy, but Apple isn't showing any signs of ailing. According to Yahoo! Finance the Cupertino-based manufacturer posted their most profitable quarter in company history. Apple had a gross revenue of $9.87 billion, and a profit of $1.67 billion. This marks a big improvement; last year Apple's Q4 included revenue of $7.9 billion, and profit of $1.14 billion.

Total Mac sales during the quarter were 3.05 million, which is a 17% unit increase over last year. Macs are still far in the minority, but they're quickly becoming a much larger "rounding error" than I'm certain Steve Ballmer is going to be happy with. iPhone sales were up too; with 7.3 million sold, a 7% growth from last year.

The only weakness in Apple's armored hide were iPod sales. They declined 8%, and "only" shipped 10.2 million of the devices. These low sales might represent the fact that Apple only launched their new generation of iPods a few weeks ago. It's possible Apple's Q1 2010 iPod sales will see a sharp rise as a result of this.

I'm no Apple fanboy (once more, I'd like to state that I own exactly 0 Apple products) but these numbers are extremely impressive. Apple has been knocking them out of the park this year; their net income grew by 18% in the middle of a recession. It's clear why. Apple has their fingers wrapped tightly around the pulse of consumers around the world. For all its flaws, the iPhone remains the easiest entry-level smartphone to use, and one of the fastest out there.

You can argue about whether or not Macs are "worth" the extra cost all day long, but the fact remains that people are buying them, and buying them in greater quantities than ever before. This is because Apple has put out an excellent OS this year, and continued to cut costs and improve hardware across their whole line.

When you know what the people want, all you have to do is provide it. Apple's been doing that, consistently, for several years now. It's no wonder people keep coming back (and bringing their money back) for more.