It's Thanksgiving Eve, and Apple's shareholders have too many blessings to count-- so why not toss one more on the pile? Faithful viewer mrmgraphics dished us the latest in a long line of recent Wall Street analyst Apple-loving gushfests, a 27-page note penned by Needham & Co.'s Charles Wolf which, as Macworld UK reports, tells his clients that if a flash-based iPod debuts early next year as expected, iPod sales will likely reach 23.5 million units by 2006. After crunching some numbers, he predicts that "100 million Windows users" will be iPod owners by 2008, and "Mac sales could surge if only a nominal fraction of this group make a purchase." (A poll conducted by Gene Munster of Piper Jaffray indicates the Mac defection rate of iPod-owning Windows users could be as high as 13 percent-- and there ain't nothing nominal about that fraction.)

Because of that and a zillion other positive factors (like greater economies of scale and the fact that "there are no compelling economic reasons why Microsoft's Windows Media Audio music software platform should end up dominating this market just because it's been adopted by a host of online music stores and music players"-- we love this guy!), Wolf raised his target price on AAPL to $62 per share... which drove the stock's price up another $2.78 to settle at $64, thus rendering his own prediction obsolete so quickly you'd think it was a Coleco Adam. So yeah, AAPL shareholders have even more to grin about during their Thanksgiving caloric orgy.

And Apple's not the only company enjoying iPod-related Wall Street success; USA Today reports on the "iPod economy," noting Apple's meteoric stock performance based almost entirely on the iPod phenomenon-- and points out that "it's not just Apple" reaping the benefits. PortalPlayer, the company that makes the chips used in iPods, went public last week with an initial share price of $17, which has ballooned to over $31 in just four days of trading despite the fact that the company "lost money the past three years." And Synaptics, the company that cranks out the iPod's Click Wheel, has seen its stock price just about triple from $13 to nearly $39 in the past year. Somehow we don't think that's a coincidence.

Indeed, just a hint of an association with the iPod is apparently enough to boost a stock's price these days; SigmaTel's shares are up roughly 40 percent since the beginning of October when an analyst first claimed that the company would be selling chips to Apple for the rumored new flash-based iPod. EETimes recently reported that SigmaTel had raised its forecast for the current quarter, "due primarily to stronger-than-expected sales of the company's portable audio SoCs into leading portable digital audio player manufacturers"-- including Apple, or so the rumor goes. As of yet SigmaTel hasn't mentioned an Apple contract and no iPod has SigmaTel guts in it, but that hasn't stopped investors from giving the share price a healthy little lift.

So where will it all end? Well, hopefully with your friendly neighborhood AtAT staff eventually cashing out and suddenly being able to afford a fleet of private jets, our own midsize island nation, a solid gold three-story-high statue of Christopher Walken, or perhaps even-- dare we say it?-- a semester of private college for Anya in 2019. Maybe even two. But we're trying not to get our hopes up, here.

So with Apple's stock flying so high these days, are there any investors who are actually stinging because of it? Well, sure-- anyone who bailed out way back at $25 or so is probably mourning the loss of What Might Have Been had they just stuck it out and had faith. Of course, their pain isn't anything compared to that of any investors who had the lack of foresight and the sheer, unmitigated gall to have shorted AAPL in hopes of profiting when the stock price declined; they may have lost their shirts, but hey, that might turn out to be a plus, since we hear it's mighty hot where they're eventually going.

But one guy who might be looking at the stock price with a tinge of bittersweet ruefulness may surprise you: Steve Jobs. It's ironic on at least two levels, because he's arguably the single person most responsible for AAPL's current $64 price tag, and he's also a fairly heavy shareholder himself, so when the stock price goes up, he makes money (at least on paper). So he's done his job well and made a pile of cash, too, so why the expression of wistful regret?

It all comes down to timing, basically. Remember when all the pundits were whining about how Steve made too much money, and as proof they pointed to the freakishly huge number of stock options he'd been granted by Apple's board of directors back in early 2000? Remember how Apple's stock tanked a few months later, making his options totally worthless? (Oh boy, the chance to pay $27 per share for 27.5 million shares trading on the open market for $16 apiece! Where do we sign?) Eventually the board felt guilty about Steve's actual payment being a mere $1 a year-- well, plus that jet-- and last year it offered to let Steve trade in his 27.5 million underwater options for a straight 5 million free shares of stock. He took them up on the offer, which means that he's made a whole pile of money in recent months as Apple's stock price just kept rising and rising.

But Graef Crystal over at Bloomberg did a little math; he figures that while Steve's free 5 million shares are now worth about a third of a billion dollars. That kind of cash buys a whole lotta Fig Newmans. However, had Steve held onto the options instead and exercised them, right now he'd be able to liquidate his holdings and cash out for a profit of over twice that much. D'oh! As Graef says, "Bad move, Steve. Some people may perceive you as arrogant, but based on your decision, you really underestimated yourself."

Man, way to kick a guy when he's, er, up. So why did Steve trade in those options? After all, he knew better than anyone where Apple might be in a year; maybe he just didn't want to bet on the long-term popularity of the iPod, since he'd seen the public at large pass over insanely great products before.

Either that or he was really craving Fig Newmans.

Since, due to a scheduled digestive coma slated to run from Thursday night right through Sunday evening, you very likely won't be hearing from us again until the 2004 Holiday Shopping Season is officially in full swing, we thought we'd take this opportunity to make a few suggestions about what you ought to buy when you're checking off that list of loved ones. Sure, we could just keep going on and on about how you should buy scads of really expensive gear via our Amazon.com / Amazon.ca / Amazon.co.uk links so that we can cash the affiliate checks and roll around naked in all the money come January, but we're not going to-- partly because we just did even as we said we wouldn't (man we're sneaky!), but mostly because we've come across the absolutely most perfect gift ever to grace this plane of existence, and despite the fact that such an act runs counter to everything in our nature, we're going to tell you about it even though we won't get a dime.

This is hard for us. Honestly, instead of reminding you that AtAT apparel makes the ideal holiday gift for the drama fiend in your life or that you can get tons of Apple logo merchandise from The Missing Bite to make your Mac-loving friends adore you forever, we're going to take the hit for the team, forgo all that luscious profit, and recommend that you buy everyone a stapler with some ink on it instead, even though we don't get squat when you do.

"A stapler?" you ask; "Yuh-huh" we reply. See, we found this message in our inbox entreating us to "check out our celebrity-autographed staplers!"-- quite possibly the most entertaining subject line we've seen in commercial email since that spam we once got that shouted "CHAIRPAK! Where do you want to sit today?"-- and apparently there's this thing that Staples does every year where they get a hundred or so famous folks each to autograph a stapler, which is then auctioned off to the highest bidder with the proceeds going to a charity of the celebrity's choice. What could be more perfect? Seriously, who wouldn't bust out in tears of overwhelming gratitude when they open the box and see a standard-issue desk stapler signed by one of the twins from Dude, Where's My Car? (She's also apparently in some little show called Alias and smacked around a blind Ben Affleck a bit last year, but to us she'll always be Wilma. Wanda. Whatever.)

To bring this whole thing just slightly on-topic, we should mention how incredibly disappointed we are not to see a Steve Jobs stapler in the listings, but apparently the guy's too busy doing CEO things to take a few seconds to scrawl his name on a piece of office equipment. Bill Gates, on the other hand, was not, and the stapler with his John Hancock on it is currently going for $555. Actually, with a prize like this, forget about giving it away as a gift-- win it for yourself! Aside from being a perfectly good stapler capable of fastening together two, three, or even four sheets of paper, just think of all the great voodoo curses you'll be able to perform once you get your hands on something that Billy-Boy actually touched. Celebrity stapler: $1,000, maybe. Using the dark arts to give said celebrity permanent pus-seeping face boils: priceless.

And then you can just buy something from Amazon to give as a gift instead. Oooo, we're shameless.