An Apple a Day

I don't want to insult anyone's intelligence here, but unless you've been living under a rock for the past three years then you know that Apple has been killing it lately. I'm willing to bet that many of you own more than one of their sleek, shiny products. In fact, I'm going to go out on a limb and say that most of you will start reading this post on your iPhone on the way home from class, continue reading on your iPad during dinner, and finish the post on your MacBook before starting homework (while listening to your iPod). It doesn't take you three hours to read 1000 words? Ok, maybe it's a contrived example, but you get the point. You personally might not own four Apple devices, but the guy in the picture probably does.

How else do you explain this? If you didn't follow the link, you missed out on every investor's dream come true. For those of you who did follow the link, yes, you read the stock chart correctly. AAPL is up 300% in the past two years. Let that sink in.

As impressive as that graph is, it completely misses the point. Apple has become a cultural phenomenon. Civilization has been afflicted with an earbud epidemic. Those white cords you see dangling from ears on the subway all disappear into a jacket or pants pocket for a rendezvous with an iPhone or iPod... you caught me... maybe it's a Zune. Apple's not shy about touting their mind share, either. They market their latest iPhone, the iPhone 4, under the slogan, "This changes everything. Again." As much as you might want to resist that kind of hubris, it's hard to argue with results. Take a minute to appreciate the unbroken string of smash hits. iPod. iPhone. iPad (the jury was out on this one, that is, until they sold a cagillion of them). Heck, throw the MacBook Air in there if you want. If you're part of the Steve Jobs cult, you're not alone. Starting with his overhaul of the entire music industry when the iPod debuted, he's been nothing short of clairvoyant--which makes this week's news all the more troubling for Apple fans.

Earlier this week, Apple announced that Jobs would be taking a medical leave. Jobs is a pancreatic cancer survivor and the recipient of a liver transplant. This is his second medical leave in as many years. Apple's stock responded to the Monday announcement with a sharp dip of 6.5%. Perhaps more than any CEO short of Mark Zuckerberg, Jobs is identified with the company he leads. His absence is worrisome for Apple, to say the least. However, if I had to pick one thing in the world to assuage investor fears, it would be a 78% surge in profit. There's nothing like hitting a $6 billion (with a 'B') homerun to help support AAPL.

How are we going to go on without Jobs convincing us that the browsing experience on the iPad is surreal or that our iPhones don't have antenna problems? Will iPods even work without Jobs sprinkling magic dust before they ship from Cupertino? I claim to have answers to some questions, but those might be impossible. In the interim, COO Tim Cook will run the day to day operations. You might think that he has big shoes to fill and that he should just lay low for a while. Quite the opposite. He wasn't shy during his first few days on the job having already launched his opening salvo at Android. Check back tomorrow for more about the battle of the titans shaping up in the mobile world.