A story on Forbes today notes that research firm Poper Jaffray has maintained an “outperform” rating on Apple, citing the expectation that the company’s sales are “expected to come in slightly above the Street consensus of US$3.3 billion on upside revenue for the iMac.” In addition, the firm said it expects Apple to post income above analysts’ consensus forecast for 31 cents per share, based on strong sales of Mac OS X Tiger. “We anticipate in-line iPod unit shipments in the quarter; our model calls for 5.5 million units in June,” Piper Jaffray said. “We note that Street expectations call for a down iPod quarter.” Apple will announce its fiscal year 2005 third quarter results on Wednesday (which will be streamed live).