Sometimes things with Apple (AAPL) are like Poe's purloined letter: They are right in front of you, and that's why the stock can go higher.
Two things are driving Apple higher today, besides the chart, which is allegedly good until, of course, it goes bad.
The first is this horrendous Hewlett-Packard (HPQ) confab. When you hear about all of these H-P woes, you should simply be thinking that this is Apple storming the enterprise. It is not like H-P is losing share to Dell (DELL) or Lenovo. It is losing share to the ecosystem that is Apple, and it is only going to get worse over time.
Sure, Apple screwed up with "Mapplegate" (thanks, Rocco, for that great term!), but it has admitted it, admitted it head on, just like great companies do. You can also download an app that will bring you to Google Maps, or to another system that might be even better.
Don't forget that back in 2010, the antenna mess, a bad one, went away when Steve Jobs said that he was human and that the company screwed up like other companies. Cook was even more apologetic and groveling.
More important, though, is that today we heard about a new Apple product, a smaller tablet. That's just what's needed to get people to stop focusing on this issue. A true play-action fake! I bet that the Apple iPhone 5 sales will turn out to be terrific, just as the iPhone 3's were after "antenna-gate."
Apple's Maps issue has been a focus for some time now, longer than the attention span of most Americans. It's losing its hold on the stock, and in its place is the new tablet and the Hewlett-Packard slow bleed right into Apple's arms.
I think that because of this confluence, the great short that has been Apple is at last running its course.
