Prior to Apple's earnings, CEO Tim Cook did an interview with the Wall Street Journal.

For the most part, Cook told the Journal the same things he told analysts on the earnings call.

However, he did shed a little (and we do mean little) light on Apple's progress with new products:

"You want to take the time to get it right. Our objective has never been to be first. It’s to be the best. To do things really well, it takes time. You can see a lot of products that have been brought to market where the thinking isn’t really deep and, as a consequence, these things don’t do very well. We don’t do very many things so we spend a lot of time on every detail and that part of Apple isn’t changing. It’s the way we’ve operated for years and it’s the way we still operate. I feel great about what we’ve got coming. Really great and it’s closer than it’s ever been."

Our emphasis is added.

Apple is always going to be closer than ever to releasing new products, so if you want to be strict, there is nothing new here.

But, from a less literal point of view, this shows that Apple is close to getting some new product in a new product category out the door.

Cook also talks about mobile payments, and says it's an area of interest. Read that over at the WSJ >