Originally published at: Apple's Q4 2020 Marks Record Revenues but Lower Profits as Mac and iPad Boom - TidBITS
In this pandemic year, Apple’s Q4 performance saw reduced profits but steady revenue compared to the same quarter last year, with iPhone sales drops mitigated by increased Mac and iPad sales as well as continuing growth in Apple’s services and wearables offerings.
No grand insights from me but it is nice to see non-iPhone parts of the business doing well and helping Apple be more diversified. Hopefully the increased Mac sales will encourage Apple to continue paying more attention to the Mac.
This reminds me that years ago friends couldn’t understand why Apple was still in the Mac business. This was back in the day of the iPod, pre-iPhone. There were convinced that Apple should just go into the iPod business and dump the Mac.
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That was a sneakily massive quarter. As noted, iPhone sales, which make up the majority of Apple’s revenues, shrank dramatically because the year ago quarter had a chunk of sales from the new iPhone model and this one didn’t. That drop concealed the fact that every other division had massive growth, which meant that despite the 21% iPhone drop, Apple still earned more than every other non-holiday quarter ever.
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My favourite thing about this article are the colours, particularly the first chart. Put a smile on my face 
I appreciate the idea, but I will note that for a colorblind person like myself the colors for wearables and services are almost indistinguishable.
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Glad to hear it! We figured that Apple’s original six-color logo options were the most obvious choice. 
Drat, sorry! It does look to me like that first chart is using the orange for Services, whereas the Services-specific chart later on is using the yellow. We should be consistent regardless; can you tell if the yellow would work better when next to the green for Wearables?
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Yes, @ace, the bar chart color for services is definitely easier to distinguish from the wearables color than in the top plot. It’s lighter giving it more contrast to the wearables green. But of course that’s just me. There are lots of colorblind people who don’t have as much trouble with green and orange.
Well, we need to be consistent, and you’re the first person who’s said anything about this, so you win. 
@jcenters, can you please change that orange in the first chart to the yellow?
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