Apple produced their quarterly report this week, and was met with investor enthusiasm across the market.

If you ask me, it's about frickin' time.

Sure, Apple's stock has sky-rocketed over the last two years, but it was always based on industry analyst opinions on the iPod. Nobody will deny that the iPod is the driving factor in Apple's success - they split off an entire business unit for it in their quarterly reports, no less - but for so long, that's been the only factor that Apple has been measured upon by the industry.

For example, last quarter, Apple had a stunning set of results across the business. However, since the iPod didn't do quite as well as the analysts had hoped, the stock dropped. I thought this was ridiculous. The rest of the business was doing incredibly well, and some of the obvious results of their strategy for the last three years were swinging in to motion.

It seems that this quarter, analysts looked at the big picture. The "halo effect" showed enough oomph for the analysts to admit that it was viable (duh). Mac sales were incredible. Laptop sales were incredible (I contributed to one of them :) ). iTunes is set to hit half a billion songs in short order. Retail stores are growing and continue to be profitable. And there was a huge R&D line item that indicates great things to come (of course, Apple remains tight-lipped about future product strategy, as they should).

Personally, I'm hoping for a few gems from Apple in the next few years. None of these suggestions is based on actual reality, but more the fantastic nature of my overactive imagination.

1) Apple becomes a mobile carrier, and offers top-notch wireless broadband service. Fees will be extortionate, but customers will flock to Apple's brand like the iPod-crazed monkeys that Apple's marketing department has trained them to be.

2) The iPod is reborn as a phone, PDA, video player, Sirius satellite music player, and game machine (in addition to its present feature set). It connects to Apple's broadband network, from which you can download movies, games, and whatever else Apple decides you need to buy. It has Bluetooth so that you can connect to the Internet wirelessly from your laptop using Apple's broadband cellular network wiithout even needing to take the iPod off of your belt buckle.

3) Some kind of evolution happens to the Mac Mini which turns it in to the ultimate home entertainment system. I'll leave the details to the Apple engineers, but undoubtedly it will be very cool, integrate seamlessly with the Internet buying experience, and will trounce the pants off of the embarrasing failure known as the Windows Media Center PC.

Hey, I can dream...