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It had to come and while pundits are usually predicting a future based on the past trend they spotted too late, they very rarely see what’s up next. While doom and gloom has permeated the media, for the last few weeks the market has been hugely bullish. This is because under the hood, the credit crunch crash is over and although recuperation is going to take years, the cliff plunge part of the process is in the past.

Consequentially as the rally has pushed the Nasdaq up 25%, Apple’s stock has shot up from its sub- $100 trading range to $125. This is a typically star like Apple performance - rising nearly 50%, almost twice the index - that once again underlines its status as a stock that stands at the apex of desirability. Apple is a single company stock bubble, a one ‘Inc wonder.’ This could be seen as a criticism but it’s not meant to be, as this status is not accidental. It comes from a semi-miraculous ability to turn out products that are several generations better than the competition. Such performance makes Apple impossible to value in relative terms to other companies. Hits simply have a different rule book to the mundane, be it in media, electronic goods or on the market. It’s also a reflection of the problems at Microsoft. It is hard to underestimate the benefit to Apple of the disaster that is Microsoft Vista. Even now Vista feels only semi-functional. I know because I just bought a machine with Vista 64. It’s the best advert for Apple I’ve ever seen. However, a cloud on the horizon for Apple is Windows 7. The early word is that Windows 7 rocks.

Meanwhile 2009 looks like being the year of the big rally, so Apple’s stock price should prosper. But if Windows 7 is excellent, the current sharp rise could be slowed. It’s still a long way back to $200 a share and it will take another miracle to get back there this year. Yet as we have seen Apple’s stock price knows no bounds.

With its unchallenged global multimedia convergence play growing ever stronger perhaps thinking about issues like operating systems is outdated. O/S wars could belong to a past era where computing was still expensive. With computers and phones being blended into network media devices, suddenly the operating system could become just like steel in a car, important but about the last thing the consumer cares about, so long as it does the job. Whatever the case, a consistent market rally can only help Apple’s stock price and the chances are high that the rest of 2009 will give us a choppy but strong market.