We admit it: we were wrong. We fully expected Apple's stock price to drop a little on Friday as giddy investors cashed out after AAPL's 17-ish percent increase over the previous two trading days; after all, investing in stocks doesn't make you a dime until you actually sell them, and surely there had to be a number of investors who would see the meteoric rise of Apple's stock price as a fine opportunity to buy that life-size Spider-Man sculpture to keep the Batman one company. So we were fully prepared to see a little red after that two-day flood of green.

But the red never came, AAPL went up another 52 cents on Friday, and when last we checked, it was up yet another nickel in after-hours trading. Clearly investors have a lot of faith in Apple's ability to deliver right now-- so of course this is the perfect time for pundits to start telling everyone why they're wrong. Want to check out one such opinion? Faithful viewer mrmgraphics tipped us off to a great one over at Forbes, in which Arik Hesseldahl puts "the iPod in perspective." Basically, his take on Apple's rosy quarterly results and the subsequent skyrocketing of its stock price is this: "Take the iPod away, and what's left? A company that sold... in its fiscal 2004... less than 2 percent of the 176.5 million computers" that people are expected to buy in 2005.

Now, first of all, we had no idea that anyone was about to "take the iPod away," so we have to thank Arik for warning us about that. He doesn't provide any earthly explanation about who or what might erase the iPod from Apple's product line any day now, so we have to assume that it's aliens. And now that we're aware of this looming extraterrestrial threat to Apple's financial well-being, we suppose we should take a closer look at what will be left of Apple once those cosmic green-skinned bastards zap the earth with their iPod Nullification Ray and the human race is doomed to a pathetic future of using cheap knock-offs until Windows Media is ubiquitous, becomes self-aware, detonates the planet's nuclear warheads, and the tattered remnants of humanity are forced to battle machines for their very survival until the governor of California goes back in time to make a few action films about the whole thing.

Wait, what were we talking about again?

Oh, right-- Apple without the iPod. Well, gee, this might be a stretch, but we suppose there's the slimmest of chances that the company might be sort of like, oh, we don't know... Apple before the iPod. Sure, Wall Street wasn't always necessarily giving up as much love, but Apple's overall business had actually been, with few exceptions, pretty darn profitable in the three or four years prior to the iPod's arrival. And the Mac's market share may have shrunk overall, but it appears to be growing again in places where it counts, like higher education, scientific communities, and content creation-- a lot of that's due more to kick-ass hardware and an operating system to die for than any iPod "halo effect." Remember, kids, these 2-ish percent market share numbers that get tossed around so blithely never bother to take into account that Apple purposely does not compete in all markets; to take a page from Arik's playbook, take away all the sub-$799 computers from the Wintel manufacturers and what's left? An Apple with a far higher market share than the 2 percent it gets credit for.

That's not to say that we shouldn't panic, people. Arik does make some decent points about how Apple's refusal to allow the iPod to work with non-iTunes music stores could lead to a shakeup-- because as we all know, Apple certainly couldn't be using its current advantage to bolster the iPod and iTMS only for as long as it can enjoy the benefits of a closed feedback loop, and the company couldn't possibly license FairPlay or support Windows Media later on if the market makes it wise. No, Apple would have to make those changes RIGHT NOW while the iPod and iTMS are both the market leaders, thus giving away free money, which is of course the only reasonable way to run a business.

And since Apple is permanently locked into never licensing FairPlay to others or licensing Window Media from Microsoft, well, the company is clearly doomed. After all, take the iPod away, and Apple's portable products, its desktop Macs, its servers, all of its software titles, its raft of patents, its retail business, its online store, its $5.46 billion in cash, Steve Jobs, Jon Ive, the rest of Apple's 10,910 talented and inventive employees, its brand power, and its customer base with a loyalty any company would kill or die for, and what's left?

Stay tuned for Arik's next article, which no doubt will contain a scathing analysis of how Microsoft will be going under any day now, because it's nothing without Windows and Office. We can't wait. Here's hoping Apple manages to stay afloat until then.