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By IAN SHERR

Apple Inc. shares reached a new milestone Wednesday, trading above $300 for the first time, as the electronics giant prepares to report quarterly results and preview a new operating system next week.

Shares of the Cupertino, Calif., company were at $300.14 on the Nasdaq Stock Market in 4 p.m. trading Wednesday, up $1.60 from Tuesday. The stock is up 43% for the year and 30 times its price seven years ago, on a split-adjusted basis.

Apple Wednesday invited reporters to its headquarters on Oct. 20, when it will unveil an update to the operating system that powers its Macintosh computers. The company plans to post its fiscal fourth-quarter earnings Monday.

Analysts expect the company to report sales of nearly $19 billion and earnings of $4.05 a share, excluding items, in the September-ended quarter. A year earlier, it had quarterly revenue of $9.87 billion and a profit of $1.82 a share.

The quarter’s results will be the second to include sales of the iPad tablet, which the company released in April. Apple sold more than three million of the devices in its first quarter of availability, but rivals are preparing competing devices for the holiday season and beyond.

The popularity of Apple’s iPhone 4 also will be examined Monday. Some analysts expect sales of the device to exceed 11 million units despite complaints that a new antenna design disrupted cellular reception. Apple apologized for the misstep, and offered free cases to customers until Sept. 30.

Apple’s success over the past decade has been built on gadgets that helped to redefine how users enjoy media and communicate with each other, first with the iPod music player in the early 2000s, then with the iPhone and now with the iPad.

For the fiscal year ended in 2003, Apple reported earnings of $1.7 billion on sales of $6.2 billion. On Monday, Apple is expected to report earnings for its latest fiscal year of $13.4 billion on sales of $63.7 billion, according to a survey of analysts by Thomson Reuters.

Shares in Apple were below $10 as recently as December 2003, on a split-adjusted basis, accounting for the company’s 2-for-1 stock split in 2005. Since 2003, the stock has been on a rapid ascent, especially over the past year. The stock first crossed $200 a year ago and was below $200 as recently as February.

The company’s surging share price has made Apple the second-most valuable company in the U.S., with a market value of roughly $275 billion, second only to ExxonMobil Corp.

By JEN RENZI

STRUTTED STUFF: Whistler’s Peacock Room, once a London dining room, is now at the Freer Gallery of Art in Washington.

Los Angeles decorator to the stars Michael S. Smith is known for his breezy fusion of American chic and European elegance. So it’s no surprise that he finds inspiration in late 19th-century expat style. “I’ve always been interested in that era, and love romanticized ideas of that time period, like Merchant Ivory films,” he said. While a student in London, Mr. Smith frequented historic estates, including the Lord Leighton and Linley Sambourne houses, both paragons of the genre. In Washington—where Mr. Smith recently made over the Oval Office and the Obama family residence—he discovered a similar treasure trove of Gilded Age splendor: the Peacock Room at the Freer Gallery of Art. Awash in rich Prussian blue and turquoise-y green laced with gold, the dining room was hand-painted in the 1870s by James McNeill Whistler for British shipping magnate Frederick Leyland. The over-the-top details were sparked by the owner’s collection of Chinese porcelain. “I love the controlled exoticism here—the mix of blues and greens accented with gold gives it an Art Deco feel,” said Mr. Smith. “Whistler’s extreme point of view is what makes this room feel so ahead of its time. Although it’s immersive, the décor inspires a number of takeaways. You could do a very modern reinterpretation of this scheme by using wallpaper or paint in that peacock blue, and then adding gilded touches and blue-and-white accents.”

Indeed, the Peacock Room offers both decorating lessons and cautionary tales. Whistler had a falling out with his client after he took excessive liberties with the room’s design. Although he was commissioned to make small embellishments to highlight his large-scale oil “La Princesse du Pays de la Porcelaine,” which Leyland had recently purchased, Whistler took it upon himself to redo the room to his own liking, adding Dutch metal to the ceiling, gilding the walnut shelving and painting brilliant peacocks on the window shutters—and feathers seemingly everywhere else. When Leyland refused to compensate for the work done, Whistler sought revenge by painting two peacocks squabbling over gold coins on the room’s south side. “The room is like a piece of installation art,” Mr. Smith said.

After Leyland’s death, the Peacock Room was exhibited in a London gallery, then made a stopover at Charles Lang Freer’s Detroit mansion for two decades before being relocated to his namesake museum—where it remains open to the public. For more info on the Peacock Room, visit asia.si.edu.

The painting’s pinks and grays create a multilayered tension with the rich blues and greens of the walls.

Best backdrop: Built-ins

“A porcelain collection of this caliber was a symbol of wealth. Like any art collection, it was prized—and thus its display is suitably precious, in gold-leafed shelving. Architectural details like that also serve to hold together a room. I often use wall paneling like you see here to create an overall sense of cohesion; that way, furnishings and accessories can move around more fluidly. Such elements imbue a room with depth and order while giving you freedom to play.” For similar-style furniture, try JAGR Collections, jagrcollections.com.

Don’t be too match-y match-y

“Although the décor is dominated by the large canvas, the room is still incredibly balanced. The princess and Whistler’s embellishments work in tandem—neither is the stronger. This idea that each artwork should have its own identity, that the two should be separate, is very brave. And hard to pull off! Whistler could have used the same colors for both, but the room works precisely because the palettes are so different: The painting’s pinks and grays versus the rich blues and greens of the walls. The tension between the two makes it multilayered rather than one-note.”

Go for a whiff of the exotic

“The Peacock Room is surprisingly multicultural. We tend to think of Whistler as a very American artist, but he grew up in Russia and spent his life as an expat in England and France—he was a true citizen of the world, and this room reflects that. Whistler was inspired by Chinese and Japanese design in a very abstract way. And to think that, at this time, his visual research would have been limited to looking at porcelain, screens and prints—it’s an amazing leap.”

F. Martin Ramin for The Wall Street Journal

Handpainted Chinese Wallpaper, graciestudio.com

Drama has a home in every home

“The design is so all-encompassing—it’s like diving into a swimming pool of pattern and color. Think of what dining there must have felt like in the 1870s, before television and color movies existed; where else could you experience this level of sensory drama? And can you image seeing this room in candlelight? The design is theater, in a way—which is exciting and appropriate for spaces like hallways and dining rooms that aren’t your main living areas. To get this experiential effect, I’ll often use murals or Chinoiserie wallpaper—elements that transport you to a different place.” For Chinoiserie wallpaper, Mr. Smith likes Gracie Inc. graciestudio.com

Late 17th-Century Delft Charger, johnrosselliantiques.com

When in doubt, accent with blue and white

“When you’re standing in it, this space feels quite dense and complex, courtesy of the rich hues and intricate patterning. Yet the design is strangely calming, which I attribute to Leyland’s porcelain. The blue and white grounds the décor and provides visual relief; it’s very clean and moon-like. The color combination’s capacity to cool things down is behind its universal popularity throughout history and across different cultures. Plus, it is a great accent for any other color scheme.” For blue-and-white porcelain, Mr. Smith recommends John Rosselli Antiques. johnrosselliantiques.com

Bio in Brief: Michael S. Smith

His résumé: Mr. Smith studied at the Otis College of Art and Design and London’s Victoria and Albert Museum before launching his career with New York decorating legend John Saladino. He returned to his native California to open an L.A.-based furnishings store and, in 1990, his namesake studio.

His clients: Entertainment heavyweights and heads of state (including Michelle Pfeiffer, Cindy Crawford, Steven Spielberg, President Obama) covet Mr. Smith’s low-key take on classic upper-crust style. One of his style secret weapons: old-world decorating tropes (grisaille murals, floor-to-ceiling drapery) made liveable. View examples of his lush interiors in the Rizzoli tomes “Elements of Style” and “Houses.”

His goods: In addition to Jasper, his own furniture and fabric line, Mr. Smith designs products for a number of top manufacturers (tiles for Ann Sacks, Kallista bath fixtures, furniture for Baker). For more info, visit michaelsmithinc.com.

“Task” lights have narrow job descriptions. They point, like pointers: goose-necked, spring-loaded, metal-headed. Wouldn’t you rather have a desk lamp? Hooped in a ring of warm light, shaded and soft, yet bright enough to read by, it can be a light fixture that’s part of the life of the room, and not just the desk.

Desk lamps don’t have much of a résumé: They were candles and then they became electrical lights. The downward shade was the big innovation at the turn of the 19th century, and Tiffany took full, beautiful advantage of that. But since the 1920s, and the modern movement, desk lamps have been largely judged by their agility: the ability to pivot, swivel and bend over backward.

True desk lamps have a greater sense of purpose. They can work effectively in a home office but also migrate freely. Try one on a narrow console table in an entry hallway, with a chair next to it: a place to read the mail in the morning, or, if left on, a beacon that welcomes you home to harbor when you return in the evening.

—William L. Hamilton

Grotto

Decoupage

John Derian’s Grotto, with its 19th-century black-and-white shell pattern, has the feel of a flea-market find. The shade is black silk string; height is 22 inches. $1,265 ($975 without shade), johnderian.com

Reneé desk lamp

Austrian Influence

Michael Graves’s silver-plated Reneé desk lamp was inspired by a 1907 Josef Hoffmann design. The lamp has a silk shade with piping, and measures 16 inches high. $1,200, neuegalerie.org

Bouilotte lamp

Empire-Style

Play the Bouillotte’s ornate gold-plated brass candlesticks against type, on a modern desk. The lamp is 29 inches high; the tole-steel shade is 15¼ inches in diameter. $5,450, peguerin.com

Sempé lamp

Modern

Taking its “task” with a slight tilt of the hat, the Swedish Sempé lamp, designed by Inga Sempé for Wästberg, clamps to the desk. A version with a weighted base is also available. wastberg.com

Although Apple‘s popular iPad tablet has been able to replace laptops for many tasks, it isn’t a big hit with folks who’d like to use it to create or edit long Microsoft Office documents.

While Microsoft has released a number of apps for the iPad, it hasn’t yet released an iPad version of Office. There are a number of valuable apps that can create or edit Office documents, such as Quickoffice Pro, Documents To Go and the iPad version of Apple’s own iWork suite. But their fidelity with Office documents created on a Windows PC or a Mac isn’t perfect.

Walt Mossberg’s review of a new app and service that brings the full, Windows versions of Microsoft Word, Excel and PowerPoint to the iPad, free of charge.

This week, Onlive Inc., in Palo Alto, Calif., is releasing an app that brings the full, genuine Windows versions of the key Office productivity apps—Word, Excel and PowerPoint—to the iPad. And it’s free. These are the real programs. They look and work just like they do on a real Windows PC. They let you create or edit genuine Word documents, Excel spreadsheets and PowerPoint presentations.

I’ve been testing a pre-release version of this new app, called OnLive Desktop, which the company says will be available in the next few days in Apple’s app store. More information is at desktop.onlive.com.

My verdict is that it works, but with some caveats, limitations and rough edges. Some of these downsides are inherent in the product, while others have to do with the mismatch between the iPad’s touch interface and the fact that Office for Windows was primarily designed for a physical keyboard and mouse.

Creating or editing long documents on a tablet with a virtual on-screen keyboard is a chore, no matter what Office-type app you choose. So, although it isn’t a requirement, I strongly recommend that users of OnLive Desktop employ one of the many add-on wireless keyboards for the iPad.

OnLive Desktop is a cloud-based app. That means it doesn’t actually install Office on your iPad. It acts as a gateway to a remote server where Windows 7, and the three Office apps, are actually running. You create an account, sign in, and Windows pops up on your iPad, with icons allowing you to launch Word, Excel or PowerPoint. (There are also a few other, minor Windows programs included, like Notepad, Calculator and Paint.)

In my tests, the Office apps launched and worked smoothly and quickly, without any noticeable lag, despite the fact that they were operating remotely. Although this worked better for me on my fast home Internet connection, it also worked pretty well on a much slower hotel connection.

Like Office itself, the documents you create or modify don’t live on the iPad. Instead, they go to a cloud-based repository, a sort of virtual hard disk. When you sign into OnLive Desktop, you see your documents in the standard Windows documents folder, which is actually on the remote server. The company says that this document storage won’t be available until a few days after the app becomes available.

To get files into and out of OnLive Desktop, you log into a Web site on your PC or Mac, where you see all the documents you’ve saved to your cloud repository. You can use this Web site to upload and download files to your OnLive Desktop account. Any changes made will be automatically synced, the company says, though I wasn’t able to test that capability in my pre-release version.

Because it’s a cloud-based service, OnLive Desktop won’t work offline, such as in planes without Wi-Fi. And it can be finicky about network speeds. It requires a wireless network with at least 1 megabit per second of download speed, and works best with at least 1.5 to 2.0 megabits. Many hotels have trouble delivering those speeds, and, in my tests, the app refused to start in a hotel twice, claiming insufficient network speed when the hotel Wi-Fi was overloaded.

The free version of the app has some other limitations. You get just 2 gigabytes of file storage, there’s no Web browser or email program like Outlook included, and you can’t install additional software. If many users are trying to log onto the OnLive Desktop servers at once, you may have to wait your turn to use Office.

In the coming weeks, the company plans to launch a Pro version, which will cost $10 a month. It will offer 50 GB of cloud document storage, “priority” access to the servers, a Web browser, and the ability to install some added programs. It will also allow you to collaborate on documents with other users, or even to chat with, and present material to, groups of other OnLive Desktop users.

The company also plans to offer OnLive Desktop on Android tablets, PCs and Macs, and iPhones.

In my tests, I was able to create documents on an iPad in each of the three cloud-based Office programs. I was able to download them to a computer, and alter them on both the iPad and computer. I was also able to upload files from the computer for use in OnLive Desktop.

OnLive Desktop can’t use the iPad’s built-in virtual keyboard, but it can use the virtual keyboard built into Windows 7 and Windows’ limited touch features and handwriting recognition. As noted above, I recommend using a wireless physical keyboard. But even these aren’t a perfect solution, because the ones that work with the iPad can’t send common Windows keyboard commands to OnLive Desktop, so you wind up moving between the keyboard and the touch screen, which can be frustrating. And you can’t use a mouse.

Another drawback is that OnLive Desktop is entirely isolated from the rest of the iPad. Unlike Office-compatible apps that install directly on the tablet, this cloud-based service can’t, for instance, be used to open Office documents you receive via email on the iPad. And, at least at first, the only way you can get files into and out of OnLive Desktop is through its Web-accessible cloud-storage service. The free version has no email capability, and the app doesn’t support common file-transfer services like Dropbox or SugarSync. The company says it hopes to add those.

OnLive Desktop competes not only with the iPad’s Office clones, but with iPad apps that let you remotely access and control your own PCs and Macs, and thus use Office and other computer software on those.

But, in my tests, I have found those tricky to use. They require you to leave your computers running and either install special software or learn to use certain settings.

Overall, I found OnLive Desktop to be a notable technical achievement, but it has so many caveats that it’s best for folks who absolutely, positively need to use the full, genuine versions of the three big Office productivity programs on their iPads. For everyone else, the locally installed Office clones are probably good enough, and simpler to use.

—Find his columns and videos, free, at walt.allthingsd.com.

Write to Walter S. Mossberg at walt.mossberg@wsj.com

By ELIZABETH GARONE

While the financial sector is slowly starting to recover, there are still thousands of professionals scrambling for a small number of available positions. More than ever, candidates need to stand out from the competition.

In this installment of The Résumé Doctor, three experts critique the résumé of a candidate early in his finance career. What he lacks in finance experience, he makes up for with an interesting background: two seasons as a tight end in the National Football League. Our experts say he needs to capitalize on his unusual background in a competitive market where skills—and standing out—are critical.

The Job Seeker:
Sean Mulcahy, 28, was laid off in December from a financial adviser position in Merrill Lynch’s New Haven, Conn., office. He says the “writing was on the wall” when an earlier round of layoffs hit in October. Mr. Mulcahy interviewed for a number of positions between October and his Dec. 13 layoff. Since December, he estimates he has sent out 150 résumés and has had several interviews. Previous to Merrill Lynch, he played in the NFL for the Cincinnati Bengals and the Carolina Panthers and he was a financial analyst at Castlekeep Investment Advisors in Westport, Conn.

The Objective: Mr. Mulcahy would like to make the jump from retail to institutional sales and remain in the New York metro area. At Merrill Lynch, he made $55,000 his first year, including commissions. He hopes to earn at least that in his next position.

The Experts: Offering feedback on Mr. Mulcahy’s résumé are Scott Fletcher, a partner at Goldsmith & Co., a New York executive-search firm focused on the financial-services and asset-management industries; Diane Morgan, director of career services at London Business School; and Sue Richey, the recruitment manager for the Associate Financial Consultant Program at RBC Wealth Management in Minneapolis.

The Résumé: Mr. Mulcahy’s fairly traditional résumé is a page, single-spaced. It leads with his contact information followed by his professional experience. He then lists his education followed by a “Systems and Applications” section. He finishes the résumé with a list of personal interests.

The Positives: Our experts like that Mr. Mulcahy has held two wealth-management positions. “It’s attractive to see that someone is focused and not moving around,” says Mr. Fletcher. All three were also impressed by his NFL experience. “That competitive nature is something sales and trading desks would value,” says Mr. Fletcher. Ms. Richey says it is quite common for the finance industry—and her firm in particular— to hire former athletes because they “understand the competitive nature of our business and this lends to their proven success.”

The Advice: While Mr. Mulcahy has covered most of his career bases in his résumé, he has done so at the expense of a visually appealing and easy-to-read document, according to two of our experts. Under his professional experience, he lists six different positions—including his time on the University of Connecticut football team and part-time stints as a sports reporter after college—in single-spaced lines, making it difficult to differentiate between them. Mr. Fletcher and Ms. Richey found Mr. Mulcahy’s résumé a chore to read and recommended he make it simpler.”His résumé forces the reader to figure out what he did when, and it appears cumbersome to read and interpret,” says Ms. Richey.

Mr. Mulcahy doesn’t include a summary statement. For Ms. Richey and Ms. Morgan, Mr. Mulcahy’s plan to move from retail to institutional sales warrants a one- to two-sentence summary statement at the top of the résumé explaining the shift. “It will be critical to connect any institutional experience he has—any client interaction, research, sales— with his objective,” says Ms. Richey.

For his professional experience, Mr. Mulcahy uses a stylistic diamond bullet pattern in lieu of traditional round bullet points to list his responsibilities, and none of the experts liked it. Nor did Ms. Richey like the style inconsistencies and grammar errors she says she found throughout the résumé: capital letters where they shouldn’t be, missing punctuation, uneven word spacing. From a visual standpoint and to get a “second look” from hiring managers, a résumé should be “perfect,” she says.

While all three experts were impressed with Mr. Mulcahy’s finance experience, they felt he needed to do a better job of illuminating it and showing how he could contribute to an institutional sales position. “He needs to demonstrate that he is a quick learner, that he can be a team player, that he is mentally tough enough to get through the break-in period to learn the ropes,” Mr. Fletcher says.

One way to do this would be to “show more context around his achievements,” suggests Ms. Richey. Rather than simply list “$400 million under management” for a bullet point under Merrill Lynch, he needs to describe how he contributed to that figure, she says. “The important thing to take away is that he produced at the level he should have been.”

All three experts say Mr. Mulcahy’s NFL experience could be his ticket to an interview as it sets him apart from other candidates. “I would go into more detail and really highlight excellence, stamina, perseverance as well as communication skills, leadership and adaptability,” says Ms. Morgan. “This needs to be much more thought out, and he needs to make the bridge for the reader on how his very able sports skills have well prepared him.”

The Systems and Applications section was confusing to the experts since Mr. Mulcahy includes his Series 7 and 66 licenses needed for selling securities and an insurance license alongside computer applications he knows. Our experts felt these warranted their own “Professional Licensing” section. Two suggested Mr. Mulcahy include mention of his efforts to become a certified financial planner in the licensing section. Currently, he includes it under his most recent position at Merrill Lynch.

As for the last section listing his personal interests, Mr. Fletcher felt it didn’t have a place on a finance résumé while Ms. Morgan and Ms. Richey felt it needed to be pared down. Mr. Mulcahy’s myriad experiences and interests (finance, sports, sports reporting, multiple hobbies) make for a well-rounded candidate—but also left Ms. Richey with a couple of concerns. “What is he really focused on?” she asks. “Is work going to get in the way of some of his interests?”

Write to Elizabeth Garone at cjeditor@dowjones.com