Things are still kinda slow in the Apple world, and they'll probably stay that way for a few more days while everyone adjusts to the new iPod products, but on the plus side, there's still plenty of entertainment value in watching Apple's stock price. It closed over $52 yesterday, just a hair short of the highest analyst target price on the books (and eight bucks over the consensus) before finally declining a bit in after-hours trading, which we thought signalled the end of its meteoric rise as traders finally cashed in their shares for a new Rolex or three. (Incidentally, has anyone else's spam content become 99% Rolex-related over the past week or so? Because it's really starting to wig us out.) But during active trading at production time, AAPL was up again by another 70 cents or so, and we're starting to wonder if the price can finally claw its way back up to the bubble-era levels of the spring of 2000.

There's just one thing that concerns us: if people are buying AAPL because they're putting their faith into certain rumors about Apple's upcoming product lines, we might see a frenzied sell-off if those rumors don't come to pass. In particular, we're a little concerned that, according to CNET, Merrill Lynch is partially basing its revenue projections on the expected introduction of "a flash memory-based iPod that could start selling early next year in the $149 price range, $100 less than Apple currently charges for its 4 GB iPod mini." If that sounds at all familiar, it should; an analyst at Thomas Weisel has been insisting for weeks that a flash-based iPod is in the works. So now there are two analysts on board with the flashPod speculation-- and what's interesting is that they each cite different sources.

See, Thomas Weisel's Jason Pflaum points to his sources in Asia when he pegs Apple as having signed with chipmaker SigmaTel to provide the controller chips for the flashPod, and he thinks the product will ship by the end of the year. Steven Milunovich at Merrill Lynch, on the other hand, bases his prediction on "a recent meeting with Apple executives," and doesn't think the flashPod will hit store shelves until after the holidays. So let's see, here... we've got two analysts with separate sources (and one of those sources is an Apple meeting), both predicting flash-based iPods within the next, say, six months. And on top of that, Think Secret has sources who "have confirmed that components for the device are currently in production" and expect the product out by year's end as well. Think Secret has a pretty good track record with info on unannounced Apple products. So can the flashPod be real?

Well, sure, it can; we just wonder about the likelihood, that's all. When Apple decided to target the lower-end of the portable music player market, the company could have gone with a flash-based product, but released the iPod mini instead, insisting that flash players were cheap, so people bought them, but they held so little music that no one bothered to use them. Now, granted, flash capacities have gone up a bit since then, but if you've watched the QuickTime stream of last Tuesday's music event, then you heard Steve's jab at "all the flash players than people get as gifts and aren't even used" and you know he apparently hasn't changed his tune on flash-based players at all. So what are the odds that Apple really has a flashPod almost ready for prime time?

Okay, sure, since Apple doesn't have a flash-based player out yet, it behooves Apple to slam them now to sell as many current iPods as possible. And we suppose that if Apple does introduce a flash player of its own, Steve can say, "yes, we know we said all the flash players out there were useless. That's why we decided to make one that's good." So a flashPod isn't out of the question, but it's a big "if" on which to hang such a high stock price. Just in case the rumors aren't true, here's hoping that Wall Street hasn't read too much into them when inflating Apple's stock price, or else we'll all have to assume crash positions yet again...