China was going all in with 5G ( due to population density and all sort of other reason ). So 5G iPhone as an upgrade was extremely popular. If I remember correctly China currently has 60% of WorldWide 5G Cell Site installation. They are basically upgrading as fast as they could.

I suppose it‘s because Covid hit China in the first quarter 2020, almost a quarter earlier than everywhere else.

The Pro line was very popular and didn't ship as quickly as the regular iPhone. That had to defer at least a portion of that demand to the next quarter.

I think schools probably bought a bunch. They handed them out to all of the elementary students in the districts around here, and I'd be surprised if they regularly kept enough iPads around for every student plus spares.

Distance learning combined with remote work made "want" become "need" for a lot of people who previously only had one computer at home.

Agreed. The fact that there is a little banner in my settings app that says "Apple Arcade 3 months available free" annoys me. In fact, it creeps me out. Obviously that little banner is easy to ignore and on its own it's no big deal, but it feels like a yellow flag like if a friend jokingly hints that they really need a glass of wine in the morning, and you know that their social circle is full of alcoholics.

This has been my major concern since 2018. When it was clear their vision of "Service" Revenue is something different to what I had in mind.

In 2014 I thought the Services Revenue Growth will be coming from bundling of iPhone + iCloud + AppleCare+ in subscription like services. Sort of like the current iPhone upgrade programme, with upsell of other things like Apple Music, Netflix or HBO where they get some sort of commissions. ( Similar to current App Store sign up commission ). Using something like Apple Credit Card ( that was long rumoured and somehow only launched in 2019 ) where Apple could afford to have revenue spread over a much longer period of time all while increases iPhone affordability. Think 36 Months instead of the usual 24 months. Apple has too much cash on hand and this delayed account receivable is something that could be used to Apple's advantage.

Instead they went with AppleTV+, Apple News+ Apple Fitness+, Apple PodCast+, Apple Arcade, and bundling them into ONE all to dilute their $10+Billion Annual raw profits from having Google as default search engine. I mean what's next? "Apple Bank" because their Hardware features and customer data which Apple do collect so they can provide better Banking services? "Apple Insurance" because Apple Watch provides Data to Apple and Apple cant share to other for privacy reason? Apple Cars with special design U1 integration of whatever that only works with Apple Find My Network? And "Apple Taxi" once Apple figure out how to do LV5 AV?

This is not Steves-Apple. This is very Tim Cook's Apple.

One of the roles of their services division is to get customers for their hardware and keep them. Eg iMessage for iPhone, the App Store

"Services" doesn't solely mean "subscription services." Apple's cut of app-store app sales is "services" revenue; as are individual songs/TV shows/movies sold through iTunes. Nothing inherently wrong with those lines of business, IMHO.