Interestingly, rumors of impending Intellitude once again appear to have given Apple's stock price a bit of a boost-- albeit all too briefly, which is a shame, because boy howdy could AAPL use it after last week's sudden overnight tanking. If you were a shareholder, you likely emitted a tiny squeal of alarm when AAPL shed a buck-eighty in the blink of an eye at the end of the week. What was behind your sudden crippling paper loss? Well, if you're in the market for a scapegoat, on which to hang your suddenly-deflated college fund, you're in luck, because there's little doubt as to the culprit driving this downward spiral: it's the iPod.

Dunt dunt dunt duuuuuuunnnt!!

No, really, check it out: according to an Associated Press article, Apple has reached a "tentative class-action settlement" with all those iPod owners insisting that their batteries don't perform as long as advertised. Surely you remember this whole brouhaha; despite our own first-generation iPods holding an admirable charge after well over three years of solid use, apparently just to make the whole nightmare go away once and for all, Apple is now willing to admit that at least some units lost their oomph a little too quickly. The settlement as it currently stands grants up to two million affected customers extended warranties and $50 vouchers good toward non-iTunes Apple Store purchases; apparently the prospect of Apple shelling out $100 million in settlement vouchers has some investors getting a little skittish. The result? Stock go bye-bye.

"But AtAT," you protest, "surely a measly $100 mil settlement couldn't take nearly two clams off Apple's stock price all on its lonesome!" Well, actually, you may be right; as it turns out, there was more bad news on the iPod front last week. Even as Apple prepared to shell out up to nine figures to placate iPod owners with allegedly dicky batteries, word got out that the channel is "seemingly overstocked on most iPod models," indicating that iPod sales are "flat or declining this month" and the iPod's exponential growth has therefore finally hit the wall. (Sure, it's an AppleInsider report, which most might consider to be less than gospel, but said report was cited by TheStreet.com and myriad other more mainstream news outlets, so it's all the same to Wall Street.) Is this the beginning of the end? Apparently investors thought it was enough of a possibility to knock a coupla bucks off the share price.

The iPod lowering Apple's stock price? Sigh... there go Anya's young girl dreams of Vassar. Still, we suppose we can forgive the iPod, given that it was largely the reason that Apple's stock price tripled in a year before shedding that dollar 'n' change last week. But we gotta eat, too, so if it doesn't stop slacking off and pulling its own weight, we swear, it's coming right off this year's Christmas card list. Think we're bluffing? Just try us.