For such a struggling and beleaguered company, Apple's been doing pretty well on Wall Street lately. Its stock continues to flirt with its year-high mark of 29 3/4, which it achieved (unsurprisingly) immediately following last August's $150 million investment by Microsoft. At the close of the market today, AAPL was trading at just over 29. Not bad for a stock that hovered at around 13 only four months ago.

The analysts are paying attention, too; for instance, Bear Stearns had rated Apple stock as "attractive," but today they upgraded it to a "buy." According to a Reuters report, the reasons for their confidence in the stock's performance are the imminent release of the Wall Street Powerbooks, which will be the uncontested fastest laptops on the planet, and Apple's plans to re-enter the consumer market this summer. Analyst Andrew Neff characterized AAPL shares as trading at the "lowest valuation in the computer industry." And a few weeks ago we heard AAPL described as the best-performing technology stock of 1998.

Whenever we think back on the fact that we missed out on buying a hundred shares at about 13 this past December, we're seized by an uncontrollable urge to shout "Stupid! Stupid!!" at the top of our lungs whilst striking our foreheads in a Chris Farleyesque manner. Still, we're somewhat placated when we remind ourselves that if we had bought AAPL, we would probably never be able to bring ourselves to sell it, so all our gains would be paper ones. Yeah, we'll just keep telling ourselves that...

Yesterday we professed our inability to comprehend Microsoft's claim that a Department of Justice-mandated delay of Windows 98 could cost the U.S. economy "billions of dollars" worth of damage. Well, today that claim became a little clearer to us in a Wired News article. Apparently Microsoft's argument is based on companies who have already spent a ton of money on their own advertising and marketing campaigns assuming Windows 98's June release. (To the several AtAT viewers who suggested that the potential lost revenue was the expected increase in technical support fees: this doesn't mean your point isn't valid. Or funny.)

Yeah, okay, that may explain how several companies who lacked foresight took a serious risk and could pay the consequences. But what about this claim that the delay would have dire effects on the whole U.S. economy? Nobody on the AtAT staff has even a smidge of education in economics, so our opinion on the matter is nothing more than a gut feeling-- the whole statement just trips our nonsense meter. Our AtAT guts feel vindicated, though, to find that they share the feelings of the guts of "some of the nation's leading economists," who agree that the idea that a delay would "wreak havoc on the U.S. economy" is pure bunk. In fact, a senior economist at WEFA Inc. classifies that claim as simply "unbelievable." We think faithful viewer Richard Class says it best: "If a delay of Windows 98 will cost our collective bank accounts some billions of dollars, can Microsoft explain how much has already been lost since the name was changed from Windows 97?" Indeed.

So even if it's true that the effect of a delay on certain companies in the industry could be dire, given that the flap over Windows' forced bundling of Internet Explorer has been a hot topic since last year, we have a hard time feeling sorry for any companies who bet the farm on Windows 98 shipping on time. Anyone who stakes a wad of cash on any software product from any company shipping on time is just begging to get screwed; and betting that a Microsoft operating system will ship on time is even a bigger risk, especially given that talk of possible intervention by the Justice Department has been circulating for so long. If they were only AtAT viewers, these companies would have known better...

Congratulations to Apple for winning the prestigious AtAT "Shortest and Least Informative Press Release of the Week" award. The winning press release contains only two sentences of actual new information, followed by the usual several paragraphs about how they "ignited the personal computer revolution," yadda yadda yadda. Those two sentences state only that Apple has "acquired technology from Macromedia, Inc." that it plans to use in enhancing Quicktime.

Apple's press release was chosen as a winner because it lacks all manner of useful information, such as what Macromedia technology Apple has purchased, how much it cost, when we'll get to see the benefits of its integration into Quicktime, what those benefits actually are, etc. Thus, it's left to us to speculate. Rumors were buzzing a few weeks ago that Apple had been sniffing around Macromedia's long-delayed FinalCut video editing software, so that's the most likely candidate. Is it possible that Apple plans to use FinalCut in an upgrade to Quicktime Pro, the $29.95 upgrade to Quicktime 3 that allows the basic editing of videos? If so, that would make Quicktime Pro look a whole lot more like "Pro" software, and not just a $29.95 "upgrade" to regain features that many of us enjoyed for free in Quicktime 2.5. (To be fair, Quicktime Pro does add features that justify its expense, but we're still a little miffed at not being able to save movies from web sites without jumping through hoops when using the free Quicktime 3.)

So again, congratulations to Apple for issuing a press release that doesn't say much of anything. You may think we're being facetious, but we're honestly impressed at the feat; it actually makes the otherwise humdrum news about a technology purchase seem somehow more mysterious and exciting. At least, it does to those of us who don't get much sleep these days.