Apple’s Q1 earnings quadruple; share prices soar

In case you hadn't noticed,

AAPL is up $7.69 in after-hours trading today, thanks mostly to a little thing called the iPod.

Apple has dominated the hard-drived based portable music player market and, as Steve made perfectly clear yesterday,
is about to dominate the flash-based market. With affordable boxes like the Mac mini added to an already hot lineup of Macintosh computers, the current base of 3% of the US computer market will increase rapidly... and rabidly. Next time your Windows-using buddy tells you he can walk into Wal-mart and buy a computer for $500 and connect his existing monitor to it, therefore Macs are for suckers.... point him to the nearest Apple Retail store.

I don't get too excited about much, in case you hadn't noticed. But even I think Apple hit this out of the park. The iPod shuffle? I've coined it "A thousand iPods in your pocket." Judging by Wall Street's response today, maybe it should be "A thousand dollars in your pocket."

Apple is on a warpath and there is no looking back. I'm proud to be part of the 3% helping to fight the good fight.