So we've had this theory we've been kicking around for a while that every entity in the universe is karmically allotted a specific portion of respect, and there is therefore a "conservation of respect" in play with each said entity. The upshot is that, overall, nobody can ever garner more or less than his or her predetermined Respect Constant over any given period of time. We have no idea if this is true or not, but the idea came to us when we realized that while Apple usually garners tremendous levels of respect from its customers, it tends to get snubbed pretty badly by financial analysts. Upon further reflection, though, we're thinking that's less a sign of some cosmic balance of respect and more likely an indication that Apple's customers are just generally a whole lot smarter than the suits on Wall Street. Occam's Razor, and all that.

Besides, there are occasionally exceptions to the general rule. For example, according to a Reuters article, Apple just received a big, jiggly heap of respect from the brokerage firm UBS Warburg, who upgraded Apple's stock from "Hold" right past "Buy" and firmly into the Promised Land of "Strong Buy" territory. That's a pretty spiffy vote of confidence. Better still, Warburg also upped its Q3 earnings estimates from 14 cents per share to 16 cents per share, bumped its Q4 projections from 16 to 20 cents, and significantly raised its estimates for both fiscal 2002 and 2003. Lastly, Warburg's 12-month price target for AAPL just went from $23 (which was admittedly looking a little low, considering that Apple's stock has been trading higher than that for about a month, now) to $30.50. Zowie, it's like a big Apple smoochfest going on with those guys.

Given that uncommon show of approval from Wall Street, if our half-assed theory of Conservation of Respect holds true, we expect we'd witness a sudden palpable net decrease in admiration from Apple's typically-loyal customer base. And while that would undoubtedly be a crying shame, something tells us it might be a reasonable trade-off-- especially given the fact that Warburg's upgrade sent AAPL twenty cents higher today when the rest of the NASDAQ went in for a slight tumble. After all, who wouldn't trade a little customer respect for some financial success? Heck, our entire economic system is practically built upon the principle.

However, if Mac fans are suddenly going to experience a sudden dip in enthusiasm for Apple, we expect it'll show up as an abnormally low average entry in our quarterly Beat The Analysts contest; usually AtAT viewers tend to estimate Apple's quarterly results on the high side, so if we run the numbers in a week and notice that our viewing audience uncharacteristically predicted that Apple would post, say, a $400 million quarterly loss (as opposed to the analyst consensus of a $35 million profit), well, maybe there's more to this whole respect-balancing thing than we thought. The contest is open now and will run until noon EDT on Wednesday. Enter now, and if you feel an inexplicable urge to lowball your estimate, don't fight it-- after all, it's all in the interest of science.