No one knows for sure what the holiday shopping season will bring Apple, but it's looking increasingly like some good times.

I've spent some time talking about this on the air: the anecdotal scenarios I'm tracking from one Apple [ AAPL 196.05  +1.93 (+0.99%) ] store to the next. Little elbow room, lots of foot traffic, lines at the cash registers, and a whole lot busy employees. Thousands of them, apparently, based on a recent Apple filing that highlighted a hiring surge for its retail operations.

Well, anecdotal now meets market research in the form of new data from Piper Jaffray. Sure, analyst Gene Munster is a long-time Apple bull, but that shouldn't diminish from the firm's expectation that Apple will enjoy a record-breaking Mac sales quarter — something north of 2.6 million units. And a phenomenal sales performance of its iPhone — something around another 6 million units.

The iPhone numbers bear a little more study. Piper says Apple's U.S. stores are selling an average 25 iPhone 3Gs a day at every location, down from over 90 a few months ago. That sounds bad, until you realize those figures don't include international sales, iPhone's unit sales at Best Buy, and what's expected to be very strong sales through year-end.

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