Wow, how 'bout that Apple stock, hmmm? On Tuesday it shot up almost twelve points to a hair under $135-- a new all-time high. The thing is, we're hard-pressed to see just what triggered such a massive increase. Apple didn't announce any new products on Tuesday. There weren't any really juicy Apple rumors that hit the mainstream press. There weren't even any analyst upgrades, as far as we know. About the only thing that happened was the announcement that Steve Jobs would keynote at WWDC-- and we hardly imagine that's a market trigger, even if word got out that this time ceiling height wasn't an issue. C'mon, who wasn't expecting a Stevenote at WWDC?

Could this just be a delayed reaction to last week's news about Apple signing up Tech Data as a third distributor? Maybe; the market moves in mysterious ways. And of course there was all that hooey about the quarter-point interest rate hike yesterday, which sent the whole stock market on a stampeding climb, but Apple seems to have gained a lot more than other tech stocks, so we can't shake the feeling that something else is at work, here. Maybe it's the Palm connection. It's long been rumored that Apple and Palm are working very closely together on something-- heck, it's more than a rumor; Steve Jobs said as much on stage in January. And as faithful viewer Matthew Guerrieri notes, even CNET is hinting at further Apple-Palm connections, playing up the fact that an inordinate number of Palm executives (including new chief marketing officer Satjiv Chahil) are Apple alumni. What with Palm's recent red-hot IPO, it's not impossible that these tenuous connections between Apple and Palm are driving Apple's stock through the roof.

Except, of course, for one little fact: Palm's stock price has been spiralling earthward ever since the IPO frenzy. It hit a high of $165 on its first day out of the gate, but now it's hovering near a low of $48. So much for that theory. No, we can only attribute AAPL's recent skyrocketing value to one thing: the onset of spring. With the exception of Graphite, the iMac and iBook colors aren't exactly "winters," so fashion-conscious consumers were probably all holding off on buying brightly-colored Macs until the equinox. Hey, it makes as much sense as anything else...