# Historical case record — Apple 2024 third-quarter Form 10-Q

## Educational question

At what time could a historical system defensibly use facts from this filing?
The answer depends on the system boundary. This case shows why the period end,
EDGAR acceptance, official filing date, public dissemination, vendor ingestion,
internal receipt, transaction time, and feature-ready time must not be collapsed.

## Verified primary-source facts

| Field | Verified value | Evidence |
|---|---|---|
| Issuer | Apple Inc. | [SEC filing detail](https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/320193/000032019324000081/0000320193-24-000081-index.htm) |
| Form | 10-Q | SEC filing detail |
| Accession | 0000320193-24-000081 | SEC filing detail |
| Period of report / valid-time anchor | 2024-06-29 | SEC filing detail and [filed 10-Q](https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/320193/000032019324000081/aapl-20240629.htm) |
| EDGAR accepted | 2024-08-01 18:03:34 | SEC filing detail; preserve the displayed timestamp rather than inventing a conversion |
| Official filing date | 2024-08-02 | SEC filing detail |

The SEC explains that `CONFORMED PERIOD OF REPORT`, `FILED AS OF DATE`, and
acceptance date/time are distinct EDGAR fields. It also states that it has no
timestamp for the instant filing content first becomes available on sec.gov
([SEC timestamp FAQ](https://www.sec.gov/about/webmaster-frequently-asked-questions)).

## Unknown and deliberately not invented

| Boundary | Status | Required evidence in a real pipeline |
|---|---|---|
| First public availability on sec.gov | Unknown for this filing | A contemporaneous retrieval log; the SEC says no such timestamp is supplied. |
| Public Dissemination Service delivery | Unknown | Subscriber receipt record if that channel was used. |
| Vendor ingestion or provider-field update | Unknown | Vendor event log or timestamp with field semantics and license. |
| Internal receipt | Unknown | Consumer-side immutable download or message log. |
| Warehouse transaction time | Unknown | Audited commit/version log. |
| Feature-ready availability | Unknown | Pipeline completion record tied to code, source version, and validation status. |

The SEC says filings are often available on sec.gov within one to three minutes
of the EDGAR timestamp, but that the lag is neither guaranteed nor predictable.
That statement is a service-level description, not permission to add one or
three minutes to this filing's acceptance timestamp.

## Correct interpretation

- `2024-06-29` is a valid-time anchor: the quarter the filing describes.
- `2024-08-01 18:03:34` is the reported EDGAR acceptance timestamp.
- `2024-08-02` is the SEC-assigned filing date.
- None of those values proves when a vendor or internal feature pipeline could
  use the data.
- For a research feature store, `available_at` should normally be the recorded
  feature-ready time, or another explicitly declared consumer boundary.

## Counterfactual audit

Suppose a dataset joins this quarter to `2024-06-29` and exposes the values to a
query at `2024-07-15`. That row is leaked: even EDGAR acceptance occurs later.

Suppose instead that a query runs at `2024-08-01 18:05:00` and the dataset sets
`available_at` to the acceptance timestamp. The result is still unsupported for
a consumer-side boundary because public availability, ingestion, and feature
readiness were not observed. The guard cannot fix invented provenance; it can
only enforce the timestamp contract it receives.

## Review status

- Primary-source facts: independently checked against SEC filing pages.
- Provider observation: not researched and not asserted.
- Derived calculation: only timestamp ordering shown above.
- Investment or market-impact claim: none.
- Reproducibility limitation: SEC pages establish source metadata but not this
  filing's vendor or consumer availability.