If all you were looking for was the bottom line, then Apple's conference call was dull in the extreme; the company made $233 million ($160 million if you ignore the sale of more ARM stock) and trounced the analysts for, what, the thirteenth quarter in a row or something? Been there, done that. But while we at AtAT admit to having a collective attention span ranking somewhere on the scale between "gnat" and "can of condensed soup," even we found some of the other facts that got thrown around to be noteworthy. So you can either tune in to the QuickTime rebroadcast of the call and try to extract the fun bits for yourself, or you can take the "Cliffs Notes" approach and read The Mac Observer's blow-by-blow coverage of the event. Whassamatter, are you the type who wishes that Cliffs Notes weren't so darn long and thorough? Then maybe you'd be better off skimming one of the many summaries posted to the web, like CNET's. For crying out Pete's sake, at least read the freakin' headline.

See that? "Apple beats expectations, splits stock." It's the last two words there that we'd like you to focus on. Ignore all that great news about continued growth, increased "professional" Mac sales, etc. and try to take in just this one little fact: Apple's board of directors has approved a 2-for-1 stock split as part of a proposal to increase the number of AAPL shares from 320 million to 900 million. That means, as long as the shareholders approve the plan at Thursday's annual meeting, everyone with Apple stock will see their shares doubled on May 19th. Trading at the "split-adjusted" level will start on June 21st, according to MacNN.

The reason that this is interesting is because Apple hasn't split its stock in thirteen years. It's a move widely accepted as a sign of stability, growth, and out-and-out success. More importantly, we're going to go out on a limb here and say that it's exceedingly rare for a "beleaguered" company that's on the verge of financial collapse to announce a stock split. Basically, what we're getting at is this: you know that guy who, three years ago, bet you a sawbuck that Apple would never climb out of its hole before it drowned in red ink and died a sorry, soggy death? If he still hasn't forked over the cash, now's probably the time to hit him up for it. Maybe he could weasel his way out of paying when all you could use as evidence was sketchy stuff like profits and year-over-year growth, but a stock split is undeniable proof that Apple's back in a big way. The moral? Never bet against a horse with a Reality Distortion Field.