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With Apple due to report its quarterly earnings on Wednesday, Fortune has been doing its usual analyst temperature-taking. The 37 analysts who have responded so far expect an average of $43.5B, toward the high end of the $42-44B Apple told the market to expect.

So what are our analysts expecting this week? No surprises, that’s for sure. The average revenue estimate of the 37 analysts we’ve heard from so far — 14 amateurs and 23 pros — is 43.5 billion, just above the midpoint of Oppenheimer’s range.

The amateurs, as usual, are a bit more bullish. They’re calling for earnings of $10.53 per share on sales of $43.66 billion. The pros are not far behind: earnings of $10.18 on sales of $43.42 billion …

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Just off the wires, Apple is more than doubling its capital returns citing its inability to stop making more money than it can spend to “operate the business, invest in our future, and maintain flexibility to take advantage of strategic opportunities.”

As part of this program, Apple’s board has increased its share repurchase authorization to $60 billion from the $10 billion level announced last year. This is the largest single share repurchase authorization in history and is expected to be executed by the end of calendar 2015. Apple also expects to utilize about $1 billion annually to net-share-settle vesting restricted stock units.

More details in the press release that follows:
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Market tracker IDC says Apple’s Q1 Mac shipments in the US fell 7.5 percent year-on-year, while rival company Gartner says they increased 7.4 percent in the same period. Meantime, the NPD Group – which measures sales rather than shipments – says those are up 14 percent …
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Apple announced today on its Investor News page that CEO Tim Cook, like in previous years, is scheduled once again to speak at the upcoming Goldman Sachs Technology and Internet Conference. Apple will make a live webcast available for anyone who wants to listen to live-streaming audio from the conference call. Cook’s talk is scheduled for 7:15 a.m. PST on Feb. 12 and will be available to stream from Apple’s website.

If you miss the live broadcast, Apple will most likely post audio of Cook’s full talk after the event as it did last year. You can listen to Cook’s presentation from the 2012 Goldman Sachs conference here.