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Well, here is my play on that company...

Since the mid 90's i've been an active member of the GNU community, only to meet (to my dismay) RMS (Richard Stallman) and concluded that he was no better than what he pretended to fight against (whoever said you should never meet your heroes is right!).

On goes the .com boom. On goes the crash. But helas, in the tech world Linux has made a noticeable entry (bear with me pls).

Markets recover and gain new highs (not relatively but hey...).

Linux is still around and a contender.

Why does it matter with AAPL? Well, OS-X is based on NeXT Step which has a pretty stellar UNIX pedigree, throw a bit of smalltalk into it and cook it with the most advanced UI in the industry and u got it.

Shortly after OS-X launched, I noticed that some pretty hard core kernel hackers switched to it from their preferred flavor of freely distributable UNIX (Linux, FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD and even Solaris). The answer? I want a desktop that works and is better. There are no other alternatives.

Aaaah!

So, what we are looking here is not what the street sees. The street still has a laptop on win32 mindset and is going down bad in betting on its future. Even more, Bill Gates has left the driving seat and there is no one to fill the position and, as result, the innovation drive suffers BADLY. In fact, if you look at MS in the last 3-5 years equity growth it is effectively RECEEDING!

Ok. iPod, iPhone, iWhatver!

One of the huge factors that street pundits don't comprehend is that there is a change of guard here. The future is about to take over from the past.

iPod sales are increasing. Predictable. iPhone creates hype. Predict.... deffo!

But the real strenght comes from Apple's eco system and the iMacs and Mac Pro's are central to this strategy. No more messing about with 3rd party lameware, no more installing umpteens of badly engineered support software on your hub. Stay in the ecosystem and everything will work and of a higher standard then you have experienced before. Even Linux with its open software stance has never managed to achieve this feat. As long as the rest of the UNIX world stays with X-Windows it is doomed to be a fringe group. Quartz is the best desktop on a UNIX (-like) platform. Period.

So, it is not hard to figure the huge massive moat that these guys are building. Regardless of what the street thinks. They are too much focussed on their excel spreadsheets not realising that in 10 years time they are the laggards. Apple is engineering its own consumer electronics platform on one of the most portable operating systems on the planet (namely Mach 3.3 + various inclusions from other unix or unix-like systems). This is why the transition from PowerPC to Intel went so smooth. To anyone familiar with UNIX developement and micro-kernels this is no surprise.

Note that iPod and iMac sales both are strong and better than expected. The iPhone does not usher a new telephony age for Apple, it is a new way of interacting within that eco system. That technology will affect many more devices than people will imagine today (hey? have any of the illustrious analysts actually ever touched on that subject? Not!)

Could the iPhone flop? Well, the iPod flopped at start, so why not? But on the long term view it will usher a new area how consumer will interact and use their electronics. Whether you want the phone bit or not, it is very concievable that this kind of interface will become increasingly dominant in the Mac ecosystem.

What people don't get is that it is the best solution for the computer on the go. I dare to say even better than laptops. If you know how to develop on OS-X you can develop for the iPhone and its derivatives. After all, they all run the SAME operating system.

So, AAPL is still a truly contrarian stock. Once people realise it is more than about iPods then the company will be priced correctly.

I am surprised I even say this publicly. I never was a Mac fanboy but I do know quality when I see it (within my circle of competence).

Guys, dig a bit into this and let me know your thoughts. Any criticism and public challenges highly welcome! 8)

Let's discuss companies, not price levels!