While our long term position has always been that Apple is no longer innovative, and that it will slowly fall from grace, its Q3 figures show what can happen in a market where Apple’s most direct rival stumbles and Samsung still has not recovered the damage done by the faulty batteries in its S7. Even as its S8 has finally begun to overtake Apple in shipments, it still has not recovered the ground lost and Apple has taken every advantage. This shows in Apple’s results where it achieved revenues of $45.4 billion, some $3 billion and 7% ahead of this time last year, and its gross margin, the thing that Apple CEO Tim Cook is so paranoid about protecting, has…