I emphasize “might” because Cook hasn’t made plans public of what he’ll do with the $97.6 billion in cash Apple has on hand, but CFO Peter Oppenheimer hinted on Tuesday that the company is at least talking about a potential strategy.

Unprompted and during his scripted remarks during the company’s quarterly earnings call, Oppenheimer said Tuesday that the company is “actively discussing uses of our cash balance” but added that they had nothing to announce at the moment.

Then later in the call, when asked by an investor, Oppenheimer expanded slightly:

“We have always discussed internally our cash. We recognize our cash is growing for all the right reasons, and I would characterize our discussions today as ‘active’ with what makes the most sense with the cash balance. When we have something to announce we will announce. Again, we are actively discussing the best usage of our cash balance.”

Apple under Jobs was incredibly conservative — he clearly never forgot how close the company was to bankruptcy when he returned in 1997. Apple typically uses its cash to make big investments in components or for a few smaller acquisitions each year. You’d think your investors would be happy the company is swimming in cash and being disciplined about its use — but when the pile grows too big and it’s just sitting there in a bank account, it’s obvious that many investors would like to see that money put to work. There have been calls for share buybacks or investors dividends for years, but they never made much headway with Jobs at the helm.

There was a hint that things would be different under Cook during his first earnings call as CEO last quarter. At that time, when pressed on the cash issue, Cook told investors, “I’m not religious about holding cash or not holding it — I’m religious about a lot of things but not that one.”

That, combined with Oppenheimer’s emphasis on “active” discussions is a good indication the company is at least more receptive to creative uses of cash in the future.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• Flash analysis: Steve Jobs
• Facebook’s IPO filing: ideas and implications
• 12 tech leaders’ resolutions for 2012

Finishing up our series about using your iPhone to achieve your New Year’s Resolutions, today we’ll be looking at iPhone apps that will help you save money.

2009 was no one’s idea of a great year from a business standpoint, except maybe for Apple. I imagine that many of us are looking at our bank accounts after holiday spending sprees and figuring out how we’re going to be a bit wiser with our money. Thankfully there are a ton of good choices to help you manage your money on your iPhone whether it’s saving on the things you buy or keeping an eye on your budgets.

Note: All links point to iTunes store.

PocketMoney
Price: $4.99 (free lite version also available)
Rating: 3.5 Stars
If you want to manage all of your finances on your iPhone, PocketMoney is the app for you. It supports multiple accounts and acts as a simple check register, but also includes the ability to create and manage budgets and allows you to get a good overview of your spending with attractive charts. You can also export your data to back it up or import data from a desktop application.

DebtTracker Pro
Price: $2.99 (99 cent lite version also available)
Rating: 3.5 Stars
The premise is simple, track your debt and set up plans to pay it off. The interface is attractive and easy to use. You can also see what your debt ratio is and track how much you’ve been able to pay off. If you don’t like the default payoff approach, you can create your own custom payoff plans as well. Getting rid of that high interest credit card is a great way to start saving for the new year.

RedLaser
Price: $1.99
Rating: 4 Stars
The perfect comparison shopping app, simply scan any barcode to get a list of competing prices from a variety of sources. You can email yourself a list of scanned products for comparison shopping later and you can add custom URL’s to search for if there’s a retailer that’s not in their database.

iBank
Price: $4.99
Rating: 3.5 Stars
The companion to the popular Mac desktop finance manager, iBank doesn’t offer as wide a range of features as some of the other finance applications out there for the iPhone. It more than makes up for these deficiencies, however, with easy to use transaction entry and over the air synchronization. If you want to manage your budgets on your Mac but want to enter and sync transactions from your iPhone without a problem iBank is your best bet. Note that iBank for the Mac will cost you an additional $60.

Mortgage Calculator Pro
Price: 99 cents
Rating: 3.5 Stars
If you’re thinking about making any major purchases in 2010, it’s a good idea to have a program like Mortgage Calculator on your iPhone. Despite the name, you can calculate car and credit card payments as well as mortgages. A nice feature is that you can save loans so you can look at them later and compare options. You also get a complete amortization table to peruse.

20 Minute Meals
Price: $4.99
Rating: 4 Stars
One of the biggest money sinks out there is eating out, so having a good recipe application on your iPhone to give you fast and easy meal ideas you can make at home is a great way to save money. 20 Minute Meals only has 55 recipes, which isn’t much considering the $5 price tag, but it also includes a helpful shopping list feature and videos to help you prepare the meal. And really, if this app can help you eat in more you’ll save the cost of the app the first time you don’t go out to a restaurant for dinner.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• Mobile Q4: All Eyes Were on Android, 4G and the Rising Tablet Tide
• Report: A Mobile Video Market Overview
• In Q3, the Tablet and 4G Were the Big Stories

The iPhone/iPod 3.0 OS allows third-party applications to utilize the device’s Bluetooth capabilities for two-player games. The first (and only) application I had that supported this in an update was Flight Control, and since then, whenever my wife and I are on a train, we occupy our time playing this.

The huge advantage of multiplayer Bluetooth compared with Wi-Fi is that you just need the two devices, no Wi-Fi access points or Internet connectivity is required. This is truly awesome, although as we cry, “Arrrgh sooo close!” loudly on public transport we can get some strange looks. We’ve loved playing Flight Control, but I thought that by now there must be a good number of other Bluetooth-enabled games. So I’ve searched the App Store and found the following games are the only ones that support multiplayer gameplay over Bluetooth. This list will hopefully grow soon with more complex quality titles.

Flight Control — 99 cents

Direct planes so they can land without crashing into each other. Each player controls different colors and needs to send the other player’s colors off screen to the other player’s device.

F.A.S.T – Fleet Air Superiority Training — $1.99

For great graphics and a true dog-fighting two-player experience.

Bomberman Touch 2 – Volcano Party — $2.99

Play the classic Bomberman game against a friend in either head-to-head mode, or co-operative mode.

Attack From the Dead — 99 cents

Play with a friend in zombie killing, co-operative mode action.

iSamurai Bluetooth — 99 cents

Swing your phone around like a samurai sword and have a sword fight with a friend.

Showdown Poker — 99 cents

Play poker against a friend.

Showdown Quickdraw — Free

Have a Wild West-style gun-slinging match with a friend.

Tank War – Bluetooth Battle — 99 cents

Battle a friend with tanks in a bitter neon colored war.

Attack – Wireless Bluetooth Space Battle — 99 cents

If you don’t like tanks, maybe you prefer to fight in spaceships instead. Battle head-to-head.

Tic-Tac-Touch: FS5 — Free

It’s Tic-Tac-Toe; what else is there to say?

Touch4 FS5 — Free

Remember playing Connect 4 from your childhood? Relive the experience.

Briscola — $1.99

Play the Italian card game “Briscola” against a friend.

Heads Up Poker 3G — Free

This is another multiplayer Poker game.

SG Mahjong — 99 cents

This lets you play Mahjong against up to four people at once.

Scopa — $3.99

Play the Italian card game “Scopa” against a friend.

ShapeShape — 99 cents

In a game that looks like a cheap knock-off of Rolando, two-player mode lets you race against a friend to finish a level, as well as allowing you to share custom levels made with the level editor.

Pong – iPhone Edition — 99 cents

There couldn’t be a more simple game than pong, the first computer game ever made.

Checkers Lite — Free

The classic game of checkers. Everyone knows checkers.

Combat On Palm — Free

Two player head to head space combat action.

Trivia Wars — 99 cents

Challenge a friend to a trivia content.

Mancala Lite — Free

Play the game of Mancala against friends.

Reversi Lite — Free

Play the age-old game of Reversi (also known as Othello) against a friend.

iPunchOut Boxing — 99 cents

Have boxing battles against a friend by holding onto your device tightly and swinging your fists around.

Speed Lite — Free

Play the card game of Speed against a friend.

Cheap Tactics — 99 cents

Challenge a friend to this simple strategy RPG game.

BattleFrogs — 99 cents

Similar to Battleships, but with frogs on lily pads. Guess where a friend has placed their frogs by throwing rocks.

Bluetooth Hot Potato — 99 cents

Pass the hot potato to other players before it burns up.

No doubt that despite my searching efforts I may have missed a game — or perhaps one has just been released. Let us know your favorite Bluetooth multiplayer game in the comments.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• Opportunities and challenges for mobile deals
• Tablet market to hit over 377 million units by 2016
• 2012: Data, spectrum and the race to LTE

Intuit, the company that helps manage your money, may owe you some. Heck, even Apple might.

In the winter of 2007, Intuit’s Quickbooks for Mac 2006 contained a fatal bug — an automatic update erased the desktop folders of users’ accounts (yikes). Intuit’s silence on the issue was deafening. Finally, after days of complaining and people fighting with tech support, Intuit offered a free data recovery utility and a limited apology. Now, 18 months and a bunch of lawyers later, Intuit has settled and will offer to pay most expenses related to data loss, recovery and data recreation. They’ll even give you a free copy of Quickbooks 2007. Yawn. Don’t have your receipts related to that bug? Oops.

Apple avoided a lawsuit of their own last week by agreeing to cover MacBook Pros with distorted video due to a problem with the NVIDIA 8600M GT graphics processor. If you paid for a repair due to this issue, Apple may reimburse you. These repair extensions come through every so often and almost always after significant complaints by Apple users, including petitions, angry blog posts, and such — you know the drill. Apple extends the warranty to three years for the identified issue and compensates those who already paid for the repair. As a tip, before you pay for a repair, search out “repair extension” and your model of Mac. Not all repair centers check for these repair extensions, so it helps when you do.

Both announcements underscore the importance of saving receipts for repairs and other losses related to these failures. Receipts take up little space and just only a moment to store. I scan all of my receipts for repairs and documentation into a special iPhoto album called “Disputes.” “Print PDF to iPhoto” is a real helper as well. I use keywords to make them searchable and they are backed up along with the rest of my photos. When these announcements come through, I’m ready to go. A few minutes of your time can really pay off.

Want to know which issue might be the next repair extension? Read Apple’s Annual Report 10-Q and check out the Legal Proceedings Section. Those are the issues ripe for settlement and repair extension.

Consumers really do get reimbursed after submitting receipts and filling out paperwork, usually more often then pesky rebates. All the parties involved know most people don’t like filling out forms, so often the money goes unclaimed by those who were affected. I personally got reimbursed for my faulty iBook adapter, got a battery replacement for my iPod, and received an allowance for my scratched iPod Nano. I don’t always agree with these class actions, but the fact is, if you own a faulty product, it’s worth my while (and yours) to turn in the paperwork and get reimbursed.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• Report: High-Impact Collaboration in the Enterprise
• Why iPad 2 Will Lead Consumers Into the Post-PC Era
• The Near-Term Evolution of Social Commerce

What’s that on the horizon? Why it’s none other than the latest picks fresh from the App Store, coming to brighten up your weekend!

Though before I run you through my latest selection of newly released apps, it’s time to indulge in a quick refresher of some of this week’s Apple news.

We started the week not with a bang, but with a tweet. In the early hours of Monday morning, Loren Brichter (otherwise known as iPhone developer Atebits), launched Tweetie for Mac, a desktop version of the immensely popular iPhone Twitter client. Those of you who have taken to summarizing your life as a series of hastily written 140 character messages, should check out my in-depth look at Tweetie.

The iPod touch is apparently growing in popularity with the U.S. Army. It was revealed this week that deployed soldiers are able to use the touch for ballistics calculation and translations, among other things. It’s not clear if voice recognition, a rumored feature of the new iPhone 3.0 update, will also be making it to the iPod touch.

On Thursday, Apple held their second-quarter conference call. In terms of finances, total revenue for the period came to $8.33 billion, up almost $1 billion over the same quarter last year. Aside from the colossal amount of revenue generated, Tim Cook — Apple’s acting CEO while Jobs takes a leave of absence — attempted to quash any rumors of an Apple netbook.

But before the celebratory balloons could be inflated and party poppers popped, Apple was duly taken down a notch with a controversial addition to the App Store. The app in question, imaginatively titled “Baby Shaker,” encouraged the user to shake the iPhone, as if it were a crying baby, until said baby died.

This week I’ve been looking at Knee Cap, Silent Scope, and Assassin’s Creed – Altair’s Chronicles.

Knee Cap (99 cents)
Released back in January, so not strictly the freshest of the picks this week, however, it’s certainly the most useful. Knee Cap is a loan tracker, allowing you to stay on top of cash you owe and — perhaps more importantly — cash owed to you. The app also has the sort of prim ‘n’ proper polished look that you’d expect from a financial tool you’ll be using regularly. Notably, Knee Cap integrates fully with the iPhone’s onboard Address Book, making it a cinch to track loans with your contacts.

Silent Scope ($5.99)
A few years back, six bucks would only get you a few minutes of sniper action on Konami’s Silent Scope arcade game. Now for that same six bucks you can dive straight into this intense sniper time-trial whenever you like. The controls have been seriously refined for iPhone, but the game still retains the tension and focus on accuracy of the arcade original. This version also features a tutorial mode, alongside Story, Shooting Range and Time Attack mode. For fans of the original, Silent Scope on iPhone is unmissable.

Assassin’s Creed – Altair’s Chronicles ($3.99)
From one successful video game adaptation to an utter atrocity by comparison. Mobile gaming giant Gameloft’s latest release is an adaptation of the Nintendo DS version of Assassin’s Creed, which in itself was an ineffective re-telling of the original and successful console version released back in 2007. To Gameloft’s credit, they have indeed enhanced the DS-version of Assassin’s Creed, however the game still doesn’t capture the spirit of what was an excellent sandbox stealth adventure.

That’s all the picks we’ve got time for this week. As ever, I’ll return next week with more news from the week and picks from the App Store.

In the meantime, what apps have you been using this week?

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• How to Market Your iPhone App: A Developer’s Guide
• Virtual Worlds: Trends and Opportunities

Last time around, Apple had yet another record-breaking quarter ($10.1 billion revenue, $1.78 in earnings per share), exceeding the estimates of Wall Street and observers, and beating their performance in the same period the previous year by a fair margin. They downplayed their expectations for the second quarter on that call, which is something they always tend to do, but Wall Street expects them to perform well, with $1.13 in earnings per share and $8.2 billion in revenue.

We should see at this conference call what effect Apple’s recent desktop update has had on sales figures, and also get a better idea of the toll the recession is taking on the company, which has appeared to be rather resistant to its effects. You can bet that investors will also be watching closely because of Steve Jobs’ continued absence, which is beginning to look like less and less a factor in the company’s success, since the stock (AAPL) is performing well. Some analysts are even going so far as to claim that Apple is better off without him at the helm. Be sure to check back for a follow-up on April 22 from us here at TheAppleBlog for all the details.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• Why iPad 2 Will Lead Consumers Into the Post-PC Era
• The Near-Term Evolution of Social Commerce
• What Google’s Honeycomb Means for Apple and Microsoft

Grab a party hat, don your celebratory garb and prepare to get your freak on because, praise be, it’s the first ever Weekly App Store Roundup of 2009.

Indeed, with Macworld drawing near, attendees should immediately check out our very own Conference Schedule – it’ll make sure you’re consistently in the right place at the right time.

In the meantime, those who can’t make it can attend vicariously through TheAppleBlog: we’ll be bringing you the latest Macworld coverage throughout. And, if you can handle even more Apple-happenings being foisted into your giddy brain-box, then read on for my picks from the App Store this week.

This week I’ve been looking at Shoutcast Radio, SledMania, Fnorder and Crayon Physics.

SHOUTcast Radio (free)
Back in my Windows days, a permanent fixture for all my media-playing needs was Winamp – it was light-weight, refined and functional where Microsoft’s Windows Media Player was sluggish and over-bearing. However, the killer feature for Winamp was it’s support for SHOUTcast Radio — providing access to bajillions of ‘net radio stations streaming the nichiest of niche tunes. Of course, these days, iTunes handles ‘net radio quite comfortably, over on the iPhone though, SHOUTcast Radio may become my new go-to app.

SledMania ($0.99)
Browsing through the most recent releases to the App Store brought even more Windows nostalgia flooding back. Back on my first Windows computer, I spent many Winter-evenings indoors whiling away the hours on a mini-game called SkiFree (which those of just the right age and geekiness may also remember). The game has retained quite a following: it’s mildly unsettling to note that a troupe of particularly passionate fans have even created SkiFree fanfiction. With a similar pixellated style, SledMania captures some of the spirit of SkiFree, albeit without a genuinely terrifying abominable snowman careening down the hill behind you.

Fnorder (free)
Amidst a torrent of awful practical joke and novelty apps, comes Fnorder. It’s another utterly useless app except there are two things to note that elevate this above the steaming carcasses of fart sound generators and iPhone magic tricks. Firstly, the app was co-designed by Steve Jackson, the excellent game-designer behind several titles including Munchkin. Secondly, Fnorder is actually an amusing and occasionally spooky purveyor of weird advise, described by its creators as, “… the I Ching for paranoids.”

Crayon Physics ($4.99)
There’s a ton of exciting creative stuff happening over in Finland: Mikko Walamies, the guy behind Rolando‘s artwork and Secret Exit, the two-man team currently creating long-awaited Zen Bound, both hail from Finland. Indeed, it’s a veritable hot-bed of digital creative talent and, as it happens, Petri Purho, creator of the award winning Crayon Physics game, is also a native Finn. The game is exceedingly clever. In order to solve puzzles, you draw your own objects which then react realistically with the game environment. It’s far less complicated and way more fun than my description sounds, so go grab it and have a play.

Just One More Thing

I’m feeling a tad fruity as it’s that time each week when I draw your attention to something exciting, interesting or irksome happening over in the App Store. This week it’s the latter, as I draw your hawk-like attention over to Pay Me Modile App [sic].

Enabling you to track loans to friends, including related notes and the initial lending date, this is a simple idea for a useful app. Furthermore, it even integrates with your iPhone Address Book meaning you can send friendly reminders to your more unreliable acquaintances quite easily. It’s great and the developer should be commended and cuddled for creating such a handy tool.

The problem is, there’s a spelling error in the title which lets the entire app down. All but the most sheltered of us are prone to making blaring, public mistakes, so it can be unpleasant to then be subjected to such pedantry.

And yet, the App Store is big business — times are hard, competitors are multitudinous. Hard-working developers just can’t afford to slip up in this economically tempramental climate.

Where Mint.com, Rolando and Tweetie are upping the game and providing serious bang for one’s hard-earned buck, errors like this — while not impacting on the quality of the app per se — belay an expeditious approach by the developer, lacking in focus and ultimately leading some consumers to question the quality of the final product. Let’s hope 2009 brings a renewed focus for App Store developers, allowing us to celebrate yet more innovation on the iPhone.

Apparently the fresh air of Finnish Lapland over the holiday season didn’t off a burgeoning bug in my system, so I’m toddling back off to bed with a cup of cocoa in order to recover. I’ll be seeing you next Saturday with more apps, in the meantime, drop me a message and let me know what caught your eye in the App Store.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• Mobile Q4: All Eyes Were on Android, 4G and the Rising Tablet Tide
• In Q3, the Tablet and 4G Were the Big Stories

My iPhone bleeds money. I buy apps, the bulk of which I never look at again. My monthly bill, in order to guarantee enough data available, is pretty expensive, especially when compared to what I was paying for earlier phones. And, to top it all of, I buy tons of accessories for my iPhone, spoiling it like a loving grandparent. Occasionally (not often, but occasionally), I find myself asking what my iPhone has ever done to pay me back? Yes, it’s a great tool, but I mean really pay me back, in cold, hard cash. Now, the folks at Navizon have come up with a way for you to get a little return on your investment.

Basically, Navizon adds to the basic location services of your iPhone. Your handset can determine your location using a combination of cell towers, Wi-Fi, and GPS, but using the included Maps application, you have no way of knowing which is active at any given time. Navizon displays your position (on Yahoo!, rather than Google Maps), but it also displays a little badge to let you know which method is being used to determine where you are. That way I know, for example, why the map was showing me as located three blocks North of where I actually am. The answer? My phone was only using cell tower data to find me. You can also take advantage of built-in buddy features to locate friends or family, if they’re using Navizon’s service. You can also configure alerts by logging on to the website to receive notifications by email or web when your buddies enter into specific areas you designate.

The most interesting feature of the app, one that I hinted at earlier, is how you can receive cash rewards for using it. In order to continue to build out their extensive database of cell and Wi-Fi towers, Navizon is offering a rewards system similar to air miles, but without the free flights. Instead, compensation is based on accumulating enough points. Also, in this case, it’s actually the number of towers, not the number of miles you’re being rewarded for. For first-time finds, you get 15 points for every cell tower mapped, and 3 for every Wi-Fi access point. If they’ve already been found before, you get 2 for every cell tower and 1 for every access point. Once you’ve accumulated 10,000, Navizon will wire $10 to your bank account.

No, you can’t retire on that kind of money, but if you’re already using your phone to log trails or track your pals, it pays more than the competition, at least. You can get the Lite version in the App Store for free, while the full version costs $9.99. 10,000 points and it pays for itself!

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• Mobile Q4: All Eyes Were on Android, 4G and the Rising Tablet Tide
• Report: A Mobile Video Market Overview
• In Q3, the Tablet and 4G Were the Big Stories

I was one of the many loyal enthusiasts that pre-ordered Leopard and couldn’t wait to install it on all my Macs. Unfortunately for me, it didn’t work out that way.

If you haven’t heard of the installation problems with Leopard yet, there are a few. It seems the very popular third-party application Application Enhancer does not work well (at all) with Mac OS X Leopard.

I did a quick inventory of my software, and sure enough I had APE installed (along with several APE plugins). After attempting to uninstall APE, I was almost ready to try my Leopard upgrade and noticed a blog post about Logitech Control Center mouse software issues.

Of course I have two Logitech mice, and have the Logitech Control Center installed. It appears Logitech Control Center uses APE in the background. Logitech has instructions on removing the old software and installing a new version. Unfortunately, their instructions are flawed as they reference downloading and opening a DMG file and running an uninstaller, and upon downloading the zip archive from their software download page I only found an installer application.

Their online help mentions a manual uninstall, but does not give the instructions. After several unsuccessful attempts to find the instructions via Google, I decided to take matters into my own hands. I have removed most preference panes and locations that APE or Logitech appear in my hard drive (through the shell) but am still not convinced it is completely removed. When I try to run the updated Logitech software installation, it promptly gives me an error and quits.

So, I’m left to do an Archive and Install which will likely leave me having to reinstall several applications and clean off enough hard drive space to have two concurrent System folders (at least until the installation has completed). With only 10 GB free on my 100 GB hard drive, that will be hard.

I hope to have my backup complete tonight and will remove most of the files (like my massive iTunes collection) in order to perform the upgrade.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• Connected Consumer Q4: New Platforms and OTT’s Dynamic Duo Dominated
• Report: The Connected TV Marketplace
• Report: The Consumer Video Chat Market, 2010-2015