Filthy lucre all around! Well, at least for anyone who had the faith and/or the foresight to buy Apple stock, that is; Christmas / Chanukah / Kwanzaa / Unspecified Non-Denominational Celebratory Holiday Gift-Giving Occasion came early this year for AAPL investors, in the form of what every stockholder wants most: upgrades, upgrades, UPGRADES! Yes, folks, as faithful viewer MrKruser kindly pointed out, two, count 'em, two Wall Street analysts just chucked higher price targets and revenue projections down the chimney with a big ol' "Ho ho ho" and without asking for so much as a glass of milk and a plate of novelty-shaped sugar cookies in exchange. Who knew Santa wore Armani?

According to the Associated Press, Robert Cihra of Fulcrum Global Partners is apparently so full of holiday cheer (and possibly a little rum-spiked eggnog) that he's come around to believing in Apple's own alleged internal estimate that Santa will leave 4 million iPods under trees, in stockings, and in various other holiday gift receptacles before the year is out; therefore, Bob's upped his revenue estimate for Apple's current quarter from $2.86 billion to a rosy-cheeked $3.23 billion, and boosted his original profit guesstimate of 41 cents per share to a full 50 cents accordingly. His new price target for AAPL? A darn toasty $65 per share, up from an already perfectly acceptable $53. Happy Holidays to you, too, Bob-- drink up, there's plenty more where that came from!

And yet, Gene Munster of our old pal Piper Jaffray makes ol' Bob Cihra look like the freakin' Grinch by comparison. You remember these guys, right? They're the ones who gave AAPL a nice little shot in the arm recently when they reported that a stunning 40 percent of high school students either have an iPod already or expect to own one within a year. Well, get this: Gene's been playing with surveys again, and his latest one reveals that "13 percent of iPod users in our sample users were formerly PC users that, following the purchase of their iPod, have already either purchased a Mac (6 percent) or are planning to buy a Mac within 12 months (7 percent)." Yowza. Halo effect, anybody?

The upshot is that Gene almost doubled his price target on AAPL from $52 to a just-plain-scary $100 per share, citing the "wildfire word-of-mouth marketing" crossing over from the iPod to the Macintosh. That, and to a lesser extent the kind words from Bob (why do we feel like the kid on Christmas morning who says "Gee, Grandma, thanks for the Xbox!! And, um, the socks are nice, too, Mom"?) drove Apple's stock price as high as $64 before it finally closed at $61.35, up over six bucks (11.2 percent) and within spitting distance of AAPL's highest pre-plunge values of 2000-- also known as AAPL's highest split-adjusted values ever.

You know what this means, of course: a year or two down the line, investors will either look back on this as the turning point that took Apple's stock into uncharted territory, or as that time that the stock skyrocketed to unreasonably high values only to get dropped three miles earthward when holiday sales didn't come close to everyone's overinflated expectations. Think you know what's going to happen? Bets are being taken at your local or online brokerage-- and it's even legal, too.

Oh, for a return to those magical days when an Apple retail store grand opening meant all the world and then some! Remember those wacky all-night campouts? The lines that got so long the people at the end had to cross two state lines on foot to get to the front door? The overwhelming spirit of camaraderie that let Mac fans work together to kill the security guard trying to kick them out and then dispose of his body? Good times.

Nowadays, what with the store count up into three digits, a grand opening is usually no big whoop; it's lucky to draw a couple dozen enthusiasts willing to get in line even a few hours before opening-- unless, of course, it's the first store in a long-neglected geographical market, in which case there's a decent chance for some serious fun and mayhem. But as Apple's retail coverage continues to grow, those markets are shrinking fast-- at least in this country. (If there's ever a grand opening within 300 miles of Billings, Montana, though, go; it'll be one heck of a party, which you'll need, seeing as it'll be the end of the world and all.)

But Apple's retail push is only just starting to head overseas, so what happened when the company opened its first store in Europe this past Saturday, on Regent Street in London? As Apple's first retail incursion into a whole new continent (more or less), this grand opening should have had much of the giddy thrill that accompanied the launch of the first stores here in the States, or that Ginza store in Tokyo; of course, one would expect the staid and sensible British to be a little less madcap about lining up hours in advance, right? Not so. Okay, sure, the first nutcase in line who'd waited for over 25 hours in the cold before the store officially opened was in fact an American (the boy done us proud), but how do you explain the several thousand freaks queued up behind him? At least a dozen or two had to be British.

Check it out: faithful viewer Chris McD forwarded us a BBC News account of the crowd who'd queued up for Europe's first taste of Apple-flavored retaily goodness, and reportedly police had officially estimated the mob to be 5,000 strong. That, friends, is a lot of people willing to stand in line for hours just to go to a store. Indeed, ignoring the likelihood that some of them probably huddled together for warmth (hey, it beats climbing inside the abdominal cavity of a dead tauntaun), let's figure that each person occupied roughly a linear foot and a half on average; that would mean that the line was literally over a mile long. Well done, Brits!

Okay, we're actually playing more than a little fast and loose with the math, here, since 1) there's no way a line with that many people in it was single-file (just look at it, for heaven's sake), 2) that 5,000 figure was just an estimate anyway, and 3) it apparently counts everyone who'd shown up until an hour after the doors opened, so all 5,000 were never in line all at once. But there's a bit of slop in the numbers, and the BBC confirms that "the seemingly never-ending line of people snaked around corners and crossed several roads," so the possibility of a mile-long queue isn't totally out of the question. And that alone would have been something for the British Apple fans to be proud of, even if they hadn't reportedly "whipped into a frenzy" and engaged in "whooping and hollering" just like the uncouth colonials on this side of the pond.

It's official: love for Apple makes everyone go crazy. Anyone know if the Queen turned up to do the macarena?

On a slightly less cheery note, what's up with everyone bailing out of Apple these days? We hear it's generally a pretty awesome place to work, but as faithful viewer frozen tundra points out, CNET reports that both Mark Wilhelm, Apple's veep (well, former veep) of AppleCare, and Tim Bucher, the company's (ex-)head of Mac product engineering, have "quietly left the company" over the course of the past few weeks. What's the matter, guys? Did they stop putting Twix in the vending machines?

Actually, CNET refers to the two execs' "departures" but doesn't indicate whether said departures were voluntary or if either gentleman got the boot. Wilhelm in particular may have been pink-slipped into oblivion, since AppleInsider reports that his leaving the company coincides with "a major restructuring of the company's AppleCare support division" that entails "significant changes to the struggling program." It's that "struggling" bit there that implies to us that Wilhelm got the shaft (Apple's support division has apparently been losing money for a while, now), as well as the fact that one AI source claims that Wilhelm was indeed "let go." It also goes along with the "downsizing of Apple call centers" and outsourcing of tech support to "India, Holland, and the United Kingdom" that's said to come next.

As for Bucher, though, we've got no reason to think he was escorted out by security as he tearfully clutched a cardboard box holding the former contents of his desk; then again, we've got no reason not to think that, either. Apparently his departure, whether voluntary or not, was kept pretty hush-hush: Daring Fireball reports that while Bucher's exit took place a week ago, as of last Friday it hadn't even been announced to anyone outside of Apple's hardware division. During that time and until a replacement is hired, an engineering management team-- slapped together by executive veep Tim Cook and including design superstar Jonathan Ive-- will lead the division in Bucher's stead.

Feel free to weave this deftly into your conspiracy theory that Apple is slowly eliminating the Macintosh from its product line in order to focus solely on iPods, iTunes, and other "digital lifestyle" products and services. Remember, Bucher essentially replaced Jon Rubinstein as the Mac hardware guy, since Jon got swallowed up in the brand-spankin'-new iPod division. But you sure didn't see Jon quitting or getting canned after six months when he was handling the Mac gear. Sounds to us like the iPod team got the 98 mph fastball, while the Mac got stuck with someone off the farm team who didn't even make it through three innings.

Yes, we know that was a baseball reference. Sorry, it's a side-effect of that whole Red Sox thing. It won't happen again.

Anyway, word has it that Wilhelm left on the 8th and Bucher on the 15th; we suppose we'll give it a few days and see which bigwig pulled a vanishing act today. Hmmm, one executive mysteriously disappearing at the beginning of each week... Apple's cafeteria serves vegan food in accordance with Steve Jobs's dietary preference... oh, lord! It's people! SOYLENT GREEN IS PEOPLE!!