For one day, at least, it appeared as if the Wall Street freakout over Apple’s past and future prospects might be abating. The stock price had begun to soar way ahead than the market, increasing by nearly ten dollars per share at the end of the trading day, but that could be a blip. Predicting the market is best left for psychics and gamblers.

While that situation sorts itself out, and it may take some time to settle down looking at Apple’s ongoing product intros seems called for, and there are lots of possibilities.

Since iPhone 5 production only recently met demand, it seems fair to suggest that there’s no need for a refresh till summer. Apple has also traditionally aligned the release of a new version of iOS with the release of a new iPhone, and that probably won’t change this year. But barring any severe shortfalls in demand for the iPhone 5, it’s safe to expect an iPhone 5s that will look the same, but have a fair number of changes inside. One report suggests using a 13 megapixel Sony sensor, and there will no doubt be a more powerful Apple Ax chip of some sort. The rest of the changes are murky. Perhaps Apple will offer NFC, a scheme used for short distance communications, such as transferring your stuff to another smartphone, or making a credit card purchase.

Now NFC is the feature Samsung touts as a major advantage of the Galaxy smartphones over the iPhone, a simple way to share your stuff, such as photos and videos, between handsets. Apple’s excuse or reason for not having NFC is best explained in a recent interview with AllThingsD, where Worldwide Marketing VP Philip Schiller said Passbook should be able to handle payments without employing existing payment processing systems. But he’s not addressing the file sharing advantage. It’s also true that Apple doesn’t always jump on new technologies until they are tested, proven and reliable, such as 3G and LTE, where the iPhone followed, rather than led, the competition.

So maybe NFC will arrive with the iPhone 5s, or Apple will get around the easy sharing factor with Bluetooth in the next iOS revision. Bluetooth doesn’t require new hardware, and that opens up the feature for hundreds of millions of iPhones.

There is also that rumor about a cheaper iPhone earmarked for developing countries and those who want a cheap smartphone for a prepaid plan. With even the existing iPhone 4 selling for upwards of $400 unlocked, even at a sharp discount, this might make sense for a purely financial point of view. Apple sells more units, makes more revenue. But Apple doesn’t play the cheap gadget game, although what they do sell is competitive with the competition. If enough profits can be had with the existing iPhone price ranges, why get involved in gutter competition with the rest of the industry? That’s never been Apple’s game, even if market share would soar. Besides, other than Samsung, what company out there makes decent profits from mobile handsets?

The expected improvements in the iPad are fairly predictable whether they happen by spring or later in the year. The full-sized iPad gets lighter and faster, and iPad mini — fast becoming the mainstream iPad — receives a Retina display. This week’s announcement of a 128GB version of the fourth generation iPad is just a normal configuration adjustment that reflects the greater availability of larger capacity memory at a reasonable price.

With the 2012 iMac still barely available, there probably won’t be another upgrade till fall. At that time, it’ll be all about faster parts, but a Retina display is still up in the air. At a normal viewing distance, the improvement won’t be so obvious and maybe it won’t be worth the added cost to Apple and the customer. When Retina displays are priced in the same range as regular flat panels, Apple might make the move. But not just because it gives them bragging rights.

At the same time, I suppose it’s possible that Retina displays will find their way into the MacBook Air, maybe as a high-end model to start, and eventually displacing all the standard displays throughout Apple’s note-book lineup.

Any upgrades to the Mac mini would involve simple refreshes. The Mac Pro will get a major upgrade, because that’s what Tim Cook promised, and he appears to be a man of his word. The largest changes will be a slimmer, lighter case without sacrificing much if any of the expansion possibilities. I can’t see that as a problem, considering that today’s Mac Pro is far heftier than the original expandable professional Macs, such as the Macintosh II, and the industry has learned lots about parts and layout miniaturization in the ensuing couple of decades.

The most anticipated product may be a possible successor to the Apple TV. There are reportedly clues to a new model embedded in a current version 5.2 software update (code name J33I, compared to J33 for the current model), but it may only represent a minor refresh, perhaps with a more powerful processor and extra internal storage. The “real” improvement remains up in the air, and the rest gets real foggy. Does Apple plan on a major expansion to the Apple TV, perhaps to make it a true digital hub of some kind that would manage all of the devices connected to your TV? What about a smart TV bearing the Apple label, and does that even make sense? As most of you regular readers know, you can color me skeptical about that prospect.

But none of those, however good the products, and however fast Apple’s sales grow, will halt today’s shaky stock market prices. But at least Monday looked promising.

In the 1980s, when I first started using Macs, I made a practical decision. My employer was moving from traditional typesetting to desktop publishing. The Mac owned that market, and thus management bought a few systems initially as a test. Over time, however, the realized they had made the right choice, since the company was able to survive a major turnover in the prepress industry and, in fact, still exists.

Having learned the ropes, I purchased my own Mac system, with color display, a laser printer and all the bells and whistles. I used it not for gaming, but for business, to edit and prepare a magazine for printing, and run my own desktop publishing business on the side. For my needs, at least, I had made the right choice.

But whenever I ventured into the outside world, it almost seemed as if I had stumbled upon a dimensional portal and had entered another universe. In that universe, the Mac did not exist, and everyone who wanted to do “real” work on a PC bought a box running a Microsoft operating system. Buying software for Macs proved difficult or impossible, unless you went to the few places where the Mac was front and center.

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So in the wake of Apple missing analyst expectations for sales and profits during the December quarter, some members of the media have decided that Tim Cook has to go. It’s all his fault, and they need to get someone in there to fix what ails Apple. Or maybe call a medium and contact Steve Jobs in the afterlife and get him involved once again. Calling Dr. Frankenstein!

So why should Cook go? What did he do wrong, and where were the calls for Apple to fire all those failed executives who trashed the company after Steve Jobs was sent packing in the 1980s?

The main reason appears to be the fact that Apple has been missing estimates for sales and profits in recent quarters. It’s not that Apple is necessarily failing their own guidance, but the inflated numbers from others who may be using mediums and tea leaves to arrive at those figures. Or perhaps dragging them from dark places in their anatomies.

The failures? Well, Maps for one. Steve Jobs would never have allowed that thing to be released if he were on the job. Only the lessons of history show that Jobs had his missteps too, and I’m not going to bother to list them. The journalists who clamor for Cook to go just need to do their homework.

I suppose the critics are also complaining because the iMac was late, and is still constrained. The same is true for the iPhone 4, surprisingly, production of the iPhone 5 has only recently caught up with demand, and the iPad mini won’t catch up till later this quarter. Was there a failure, or is Apple pushing the supply chain as hard as possible to get these products out in sufficient quantities?

Consider the result to sales and profits if the iMac arrived with full availability a month earlier, without production bottlenecks, and the iPhone and iPad mini weren’t similarly constrained. Imagine how the results would have fared if Mac sales were on a par with last year, or a tad ahead, and Apple moved a few million more iPhones and iPad minis during the quarter. Forget about every other factor in Apple’s numbers, and tally the results. Revenue would be several billion dollars higher, and profits would have exceeded last year. End of complaint.

If Apple’s problems occurred because of a falloff in demand, that’s one thing. If the products weren’t almost universally praised by customers, and given high marks by reviewers, that would be another. If the production problems were somehow due to a Cook screwup of some sort, that would also be a factor in considering his future at Apple.

But Cook has been doing the operations thing at Apple since the 1990s, and he’s been a tremendous success at it. If, after their best efforts, Apple can’t meet the full demand for their products, that’s actually not a bad thing. It’s only a bad thing if lots of customers lose patience and go elsewhere rather than wait for delivery, even if the shipment arrives a few weeks later.

The other argument, which also betrays serious ignorance, is the claim that Apple must revolutionize a product category every single year. How, then, do you explain the lapse of six years between the introduction of the iPod in 2001 and the launch of the iPhone in 2007? Did the arrival of the iPad in 2010 mean that Apple must now enter a three-year cycle? If so, the year is still young, and, other than the usual product refreshes, nobody outside of Apple really knows what’s on tap for this year.

Sure, Cook is still dropping broad hints about something in the TV space. That two million copies of the Apple TV were sold in the last quarter would be amazing for any company other than Apple. To them, two million is still a hobby, though I can see where it can grow into a fairly mainstream product assuming a new generation model expands the ability to control your TV experience. I am not convinced that Apple really wants — or needs — to build a TV set to make a dent in that market. A pretty smart TV with a spiffy interface and some unique control functions might be a big seller, but hardly a revolution.

On the other hand, I’m not apologizing for Tim Cook. Were he to leave tomorrow, he could retire and travel the world for the rest of his life and never worry about the next car payment or electric bill. But I don’t see evidence of his failure, and I see sensible reasons why Apple didn’t do quite as well as the financial community expected.

The next six months, however, will be the key to how Apple’s ongoing prospects are perceived. But even if the growth rate slows to “normal” levels, that’s nothing to apologize for.

All right, folks, Apple doesn’t walk on water. Sure, nobody believes they do, except for certain members of the tech media and the financial community. Unfortunately, that meme has played out in the media in ways that appear to have hurt Apple’s stock price big time. Even though the price had risen considerably Wednesday ahead of Apple’s quarterly financial announcement, I suppose you could almost feel the skittishness on the part of investors.

In the end, Apple’s numbers were a mixed bag. Analysts expected fiscal first quarter sales — the December quarter — at $54.98 billion, with earnings per share of $13.48. In the end, Apple tallied revenue of $54.51 billion, with net profits of $13.1 billion, or $13.81 per diluted share. This compares to $46.3 billion and a net profit of $13.1 billion, or $13.87 per diluted share last year, in which the quarter ran 14 weeks, compared to 13 weeks this year.

One key concern is that this is the first time in a decade where Apple failed to achieve growth in profits compared to the previous year, which is but one factor that has the street freaked, even though Apple exceeded estimates in most respects. Perhaps more important, Apple ran into trouble building enough iPhones and iPad minis to meet demand. That’s a good problem to have.

In all, 47.8 million iPhones were sold, below recently inflated expectations in the 50 million range, and 22.9 million iPads, about what was expected. Gross margins were 38.6%, more than analyst expectations, but less than the 44.7% of the year-ago quarter. It’s easy to see where hopes for higher iPhone sales were once again responsible for Wall Street’s tepid response, considering the supplies if of the iPhone 5 were constrained only until the last few weeks. That clearly slowed sales somewhat, but that wasn’t the only factor. Surprisingly, the iPhone 4, today’s entry-level model, was constrained through the entire quarter. Apple evidently underestimated demand.

Mac sales weren’t too good, at 4.1 million units, very likely because of general PC sales trends, and the failure to deliver enough iMacs for the quarter. Both the 21.5-inch and 27-inch versions are still back ordered for several weeks. Last year, Apple moved some 5.2 million Macs during the same quarter, but again, there was an extra week to sell product.

In retrospect, you wonder whether Apple might have done better to keep the existing iMac in the lineup, and holding off on the new model until this quarter. The October introduction simply gutted sales of the existing model, which hardly helped total Mac sales. During the conference call with analysts, COO Peter Oppenheimer claims that inventory was still “significantly constrained,” while Cook asserted that sales would have been “considerably higher” had the inventory been available to ship. Indeed, Cook said that sales of Mac portables were in line with IDC estimates, so it was to some extent about the iMac. But don’t forget iPad cannibalization, something that may have been even higher had there been enough iPads available. Cook says the company “never fears cannibalization,” stating that the iPad is definitely hurting sales of PCs. But to Apple, cannibalization is a “huge opportunity.”

When it comes to the iPad, Cook said they could have sold even more had there been enough iPad minis available. When asked about the product mix, Oppenheimer said they were constrained every week, and couldn’t build more. A significant backlog still exists, he said, but he didn’t actually reveal a product breakdown among the various models.

Predictably the company’s stock still stumbled in after hours training. But, ever optimistic, Apple CEO Tim Cook claimed to be pleased with the results, saying in a press release ahead of the conference call, “We’re thrilled with record revenue of over $54 billion and sales of over 75 million iOS devices in a single quarter. We’re very confident in our product pipeline as we continue to focus on innovation and making the best products in the world.”

Apple’s guidance for the current quarter was typically conservative, between $41 billion and $43 billion, while analysts were expecting $45 billion. Oppenheimer says their new approach is to report guidance as a range rather than a single figure. In any case, Apple is still a cash cow with $137.2 billion on hand. The rest of the key numbers can be had at Apple’s site.

During the conference call, when asked about having more iPhone screen sizes to match the competition, Cook said “nobody comes close to matching the quality of the Retina display,” claiming that the larger size is the right one to allow for maximum ease of use. When it comes to rumors of severe component cuts, or build plans, Cook said that the supply chain is very complex, and you can’t use just one measure or single data point as an indication of what might be going on with sales and demand.

With Maps, Cook said a number of improvements have already been made, particularly when it comes to satellite imagery and local information. Map usage, he said, was “significantly higher” since iOS 6 was released, and promised that they would continue to make improvements until the service meets their standards.

When he comes to the Apple TV hobby, sales were over two million in the December quarter, up 60% over the previous year. What was a small niche, according to Cook, is now a “much larger number.” Other than saying the TV segment remains an item of “intense interest” and that there’s a “lot we can contribute in the space,” Cook declined to say any more. Whether that’s enough depends, I suppose, on what you expect to come this year or the next.

As for the rest of this year, Cook says that their pipeline is “chock full” of “incredible stuff,” adding that “The most important thing to Apple is to make the best products in the world that enrich customers’ lives,” that they are not interested in just building gadgets that make lots of money for the company.

The other question of the ages, whether there will be a lower cost iPhone this year, was typically deflected.

In any case, prepare to read loads of articles on how Apple must fix itself, including firing Tim Cook and introducing a revolutionary new product every single year. Or maybe everyone is in need of a reality check.