Apple stock woes: I can hear Steve Jobs yelling "WTF?!?" from here

Seems Apple Inc. (yes, the maker of more Macintosh® computers than ever and the company that now abso-frakkin'-lutely pwns the digital-music market, courtesy of its iPod/iPhone family) has yet again fallen afoul of investors. Despite posting its best damn quarter in its over-three-decade history, its stock still slid big-time in after-hours trading yesterday, just because its massive increase in filthy lucre inflow wasn't quite as massive as the analysts on Wall Street (notice what word makes up the first couple syllables of "analyst"?) had been looking for.

Consensus on the discrepancy between Apple's success and shareholder bearishness seems to be (as BusinessWeek Online reports here) that it arises, at least in part, from the market's chewing its collective nails down to the cuticle in terror that a recession is about to hit the US (and its businesses) where it hurts the most.