Apple ran a deal last month that those with a minimum purchase order will qualify for free standard shipping when placed through the U.S. online Apple store. The company has now extended that special, but now with faster 2-3 business day free shipping. With this new shipping promotion from Apple, it will provide a faster delivery service and piece of mind to those wanting to complete their shopping before Christmas day.

Apple has announced that from today throughout the Christmas season it will offer free shipping on all products ordered from their online store. Until December 22nd, all purchases will have the opportunity to get free shipping, allowing the consumers to save a few dollars on low cost purchases that are below the normal requirement of $50 dollars or more.

Apple put out the official numbers for iPhone 4S sales for this past weekend, and the total units sold is a whooping 4 million. Yes, believe it or not, that’s the total number of iPhone 4S units sold during just the first weekend of availability. It’s kind of amazing that despite the “disappointments” of critics on the features of iPhone 4S, particularly the much talked about SIRI personal voice assistant, Apple still managed to get those numbers.

Apple has announced their financial results for the third fiscal quarter of 2010. With the launch of the iPad and iPhone 4, Apple posted record numbers, with $15.7 billion in revenue and a net quarterly profit of $3.25 billion. One year ago, in the same quarter, Apple posted $9.73 billion in revenue and $1.83 billion in profit. It seems Apple, despite all the recent negative press about the iPhone 4, continues to utterly dominate, posting record highs in profit and units sold.

Apple announced another great financial quarter yesterday: $3.07 ba-ba-ba-billion of profit on sales of 8.75 million iPhones, 10.89 million iPods, and 2.94 million Macs for the best non-holiday quarter ever. And who came closest to predicting this blowout? Professional analysts who are paid handsome salaries to advise investors? Nope. Bloggers.

And we’re not even talking about iPhones here, we’re talking about Macs. Due to a perfect storm that occurred with the introduction of new Macs and a slowdown in PC sales right before the introduction of Windows 7, Macs were the most popular computers sold in both desktop and laptop form, according to a CNet report from the NPD Group.

If you’ve been reading Appletell for the last week, you know there were lots of great Black Friday deals on Apple’s products. Apple hasn’t offically relased a statement of how well they did, but we have a few stats…

If Apple’s rumored Black Friday sale isn’t quite good enough for you, know this; there are other options. Best Buy will be having a Black Friday Apple sale of their own, if the image above is to be believed, and in some cases it will beat the Apple sale. But that’s not all; MacMall.com is currently running a very impressive sale on MacBook Pros.

Along with many other large corporations, Apple has shown some signs of being affected by our current recession, which is likely to continue in the near future. According to Thomson Reuters, Apple is expected to have a 13% year-over-year increase in earnings to $1.42 a share, which is above Apple’s own expectations of between $1.18 to $1.23. However, some people on Wall Street are expecting even more of Apple…

Along with the obviously exciting product updates and announcements at Apple’s September event was the familiar face we all know and love, Steve Jobs. After sincerely thanking the donor of his liver and Apple community for helping him make it through his tough time in dealing with health, he went on to offer some fairly interesting numbers about Apple and their products. Ranging from the iPhone to iTunes, they help to give an insight into where Apple will be focusing.