The company already guided investors to a flat per cent revenue decline due largely to a lack of interest in its Mac and iPads. We expect to see iPhone sales fall 3.8 per cent to $48.66 billion. Declines are expected in every Apple hardware product line.

To be fair to Apple, most hardware makers are suffering so there is no reason to expect coverage of the results to be otherwise.

However, Apple has its lackeys in the press who mindlessly will spin whatever happens to day as “good news.” Some of this we saw as instead of focusing on Apple’s poor numbers, some choose to blow such PR-friendly dog whistles, such as how Job’s Mob will shower investors with cash or how much of its own stock it is going to buy back.

The concept of buyback is funny. Basically, if your share price is low, you can afford to use your cash to buy some of it. This means there is less of it around, and it increases slightly. It also has an effect on debt which looks good on the balance sheet.

Wall Street expects Apple to spend $90 billion in buybacks. The figure tells you nothing about how well the company is going, indeed, that figure is the same as last year. But since 2012 buybacks have been one method Apple has used to keep the good news flowing to Wall Street.

From 2012 through the end of 2022, Apple spent over $572 billion on share repurchases, the most of any company, according to FactSet data.

So, if you have gotten this far in the story you can see how desperate the Tame Apple Press has been to find good news in what might be a really bad day for Apple.