So after fretting over the ongoing dilution of Apple’s market cap, a new spate of positive comments sent the stock price soaring all over again on Wednesday. This roller coaster effect will likely continue until next week, when Apple spills the beans on the last quarter’s earnings picture.

In the meantime, though, it’s probably far more reasonable to speculate on what sort of product mix you should expect from Apple this year. Predicting the highs and lows of the stock price is best left to people who earn the big bucks by providing that information. Or maybe they should all be ignored because of the contradictions and the really amateurish reporting you see in the financial world these days.

Now when you want to speculate on Apple’s future product plans, things can go from logical to wacky real quickly. So, based on the way Apple has handled previous iPhone upgrades, and allowing for the factor of unpredictability, it’s fair to suggest the next revision will be an iPhone 5s. It will have essentially the same form factor as the iPhone 5, and may seem indistinguishable even up close. The media skeptics will rant how Apple is not creative anymore. But when you look inside, this iPhone 5s will sport faster parts, and maybe some extra features, such as fingerprint recognition and NFC.

NFC, or Near Field Communication, is one of those features that is already present on other smartphones. Samsung uses that as an advantage, showing you in some of TV ads how you can easily share your stuff by merely tapping another Samsung smartphone, and isn’t it interesting that you can’t do that on an iPhone? Well, once Apple is satisfied that the standard can be reliably implemented, which isn’t a given these days, you may see it turn up. The iPhone wasn’t the first to offer 3G and LTE either. For Apple, it’s never about adding new features, but adding features that make sense and usually work reliably. I say usually, since Maps for iOS 6 was obviously other than reliable.

So far, there’s nothing here that should strike anyone as stretching logic. It’s a natural evolution of the iPhone. But one analyst is taking about a different sort of iPhone 5, with a plastic back. I suppose that’s to make it cheaper, and somehow in keeping with speculation about a low-cost iPhone. But it hardly makes sense since, with the same components, the cost savings would be slight. What will probably happen is that the iPhone 5, in 8GB form, will be sold for less, probably $100 with a two-year contract. The iPhone 4s will take the low-end of the lineup, and the iPhone 4 will be history. But since even a free iPhone will cost roughly $400 without a carrier subsidy, some suggest Apple must make one cheaper yet, say in the $199 range. Think about hundreds of millions of potential customers in the third world, or in any situation where a subsidized wireless plan isn’t an option?

How to make a cheaper iPhone? Well, if Apple plans to sell hundreds of millions of copies, they might not have to sacrifice very much to bring the bill of particulars down. Or maybe they will use cheaper versions of some components, and consider ditching other features, but the latter doesn’t make a whole lot of sense; well partly. Without a Retina display, and with a cheaper, but no less elegant case, maybe Apple could sell one for $299.

Remember the analysts, so-called, suggested the iPad mini would be sold for $249 or $299, and you all know how that turned out. So I wouldn’t dispute the prospects of lower cost iPhone, but it won’t be nearly as inexpensive as the analysts suggest. That’s just not Apple’s way.

Regardless, it has been suggested the next iPhone will come by summer, along with, perhaps, iOS 7. Nothing to dispute there. I think Apple does want to speed up the product refresh cycle.

For the iPad, come March or April, the mini gets a Retina display. And the fifth generation full-sized iPad will be thinner and lighter. Again no stretch.

The same can be said about the long-awaited Mac Pro refresh, since Tim Cook promises a respectable revision to Apple’s professional Mac. It may even come with a new form factor, and thinner and lighter makes sense. But if it loses the optical drive, you are going to hear loads of complaints from content creators who will object to being forced to buy one as an option on a workstation, even if it’s only $79. This one you can expect by WWDC time, along with, perhaps, news about OS 10.9.

MacBooks will get expected product refreshes, and some suggest the Retina display will be available for less money and ultimately appear on the entire lineup. But wouldn’t it be nice if Apple relented about those impossible RAM upgrade prospects? The iMac, having arrived so late in 2012, probably won’t get a refresh till fall, and it’ll just be faster parts.

Aside from some iPod updates, what’s left? Oh yes, a certain TV initiative. But I still think it’ll be less about an Apple branded TV set and more about a souped up Apple TV box.

All so predictable. But what about the Apple gadget that you never thought you’d need, but, once you use it, you can’t live without it? Can Apple still deliver such a thing? And what would Apple gadget that you didn’t expect? What indeed!

It’s a sure thing that Apple’s stock price has had a roller coaster ride in recent months. After reaching a peak of $700 per share last September, the price has dropped considerably. It was under $500 as of Tuesday. Now, you’d think that there are logical reasons for developments of this sort, but reading the Wall Street tea leaves can often be an exercise in futility.

So Apple’s stock price has crashed big time, and you wonder if the company is in trouble, or has, at the very least, lost its luster for some reason. The stock’s current behavior appears to result from reports, dating back to early December, indicating that Apple had severely cut back on component orders for the iPhone 5. The current version, from the Wall Street journal, asserts that “the Nikkei said Japan Display and Sharp have begun reducing production of the liquid-crystal-display panels used in the iPhone 5 amid slower-than-anticipated global sales of the handset.”

Rather than consider other possible reasons for this decision, assuming it’s correct — and no such thing has been confirmed by Apple — the media has looked strictly for bad news. If Apple needs fewer parts, demand for the iPhone 5 must have fallen off precipitously. It’s not that there are any other possible reasons, or that, perish forbid, the story just isn’t true.

At the same time, a number of industry analysts that deliver reasonably credible estimates of tech gear sales, such as Shaw Wu of Sterne Agee, report their own contacts among suppliers of Apple components indicate “robust’ demand. So what’s going on here?

Well, the largest part of the problem is the source. Yes, you can argue that the current owners of the Wall Street Journal, News Corporation, headed by Rupert Murdoch, is not the most credible news source nowadays. But the real issue is that the reporters who delivered that story, and their editors, failed to use common sense. Other reasons for an alleged cutback in components purchases wasn’t considered.

It’s not hard to suggest such alternatives, and still allow for great iPhone 5 sales. One is that Apple and their contractors have improved manufacturing yields, meaning fewer parts are needed. The other is that Apple may divide component purchases differently among various suppliers in the normal course of events, or choose different suppliers altogether. One example is the supposed cutback in purchasing from Samsung, with whom Apple remains in ongoing litigation over intellectual property issues. Yet another reason is seasonal. Sales in the March quarter are usually a lot less than a December quarter for obvious reasons. Hence fewer parts are needed.

One report has it that Apple had planned to announce a new iPhone 5 carrier in China, but that agreement has been delayed. So the additional iPhones needed to fill that demand won’t be built, at least not yet. This doesn’t mean that sales for the last quarter were bad, or that there was a severe falloff in demand for this quarter.

Add to this the prevailing fear factor on Wall Street. The market survived the temporarily resolution of the so-called “fiscal cliff,” only to be faced with the partisan divide over the debt ceiling, and the possibility of a government shutdown. The market is shaky, and the slightest evidence that something is wrong at Apple sent the stock reeling.

Worse, it appears the media has picked up on the meme that Apple is having a problem selling iPhones, although no such thing has been proven. For example, I heard a couple of talking heads bantering incoherently on the subject the other day on one of the 24/7 cable news networks. I felt hugely tempted to phone or write them and provide a measure of common sense. But it doesn’t matter. If the news about Apple takes a favorable direction again, there will be new bantering on the subject that will be oblivious to the previous bantering.

During this “quiet period,” Apple isn’t responding. But the company is facing serious pressure ahead of next week’s financial announcements. If they report record sales in almost all areas for the December quarter, and revenue and profits that reflect those numbers, will the Wall Street Journal apologize for publishing a story that wiped tens of billions of dollars from the company’s market cap? What about guidance for the current quarter also indicating robust sales? Or would the media use the excuse that the story came from sources that are usually accurate?

I suppose it is possible that, in the end, whatever Apple announces next week won’t meet the expectations of industry analysts and the investment community. Even when Apple does exceed their own guidance, the results are sometimes viewed unfavorably.

On the other hand, maybe the expectations for next week are properly diminished now. People expect doom and gloom, or at least tepid results. Anything that exceeds those expectations might be reviewed favorably enough to send Apple’s stock price soaring.

But you have to wonder how unconfirmed reports, without any solid evidence, can sink a company’s value, and why far too many people take it seriously.

Of course, the Wall Street Journal also said Apple would build a cheap — make that low-cost — iPhone this year. Maybe it’s true, maybe it’s not. But that doesn’t mean the story about a lack of demand for the iPhone 5 has any basis in fact.

So on Monday morning, Apple’s stock price took a drubbing because of a rumor, never officially confirmed by the company, that orders for the 4-inch LCDs used on the iPhone 5 were severely cut back for the current quarter. The alleged reason: Soft demand, meaning that the luster of the new iPhone had supposedly worn off to an astonishing degree.

Coming off what analysts are suggesting is a record quarter for iPhone sales — and including reports that the American wireless carriers had sold record numbers of Apple’s “jesus phone” — this would be a curious development indeed.

Predictably, the media is wondering whether people woke up one day and decided they no longer want iPhones. Unfortunately, the story lacks a center and, in fact, common sense. Besides, it’s nothing new.

In early December, a story that cited sources in the Asian supply chain made the very same claim. But, after an initial flurry of concern, reality asserted itself. Sales in the March quarter would predictably be far less than the December quarter, so Apple would order fewer parts. Period. Nothing strange about that, except in this hypersensitive environment where even the suggestion of trouble is enough to sink Apple’s stock.

I would be willing to suggest, with no information at hand to confirm the statement, that Samsung also cut parts orders for their smartphones for this quarter. Why should it be otherwise? This is the way the tech business works, but Apple is getting blamed for normal behavior.

Now I would think that the editors of the Wall Street Journal, the country’s largest financially oriented newspaper, would understand the niceties of production and demand, and how seasonal factors impact sales. You would also think they were aware of the history of the story, and that it was weeks old before being presented as something altogether new and the source of potentially serious concerns about Apple. Indeed, some industry analysts, including J. P. Morgan, are already calling the story little more than “noise” and not news. A similar response comes from Shaw Wu of Sterne Agee, who reports that his information from suppliers continues to reveal “robust” demand for the iPhone 5.

What’s more, don’t forget the recent introduction of the iPhone 5 in China, when two million copies were sold over the first weekend on sale. But you do recall how tech pundits claimed, at first, that sales were poor, because customers weren’t crowding the stores to get theirs? It turned out that Apple offered online reservations, so people could just go in at their convenience to pick up their merchandise. Fewer lines, but such subtleties escaped the media at the time until the sales figures were revealed.

The larger question is just how Apple’s sales fared for the December quarter, and how they seem to have progressed for this quarter. When Apple releases their financials on January 23rd, the situation will be more obvious. It won’t be just the sales and revenue already booked, but the guidance for the current quarter. That will either confirm the current reports of poor iPhone 5 demand, or demonstrate that the media has made a big deal out of an old story that merely reflected a normal component inventory situation.

In all fairness, some members of the media have already awakened to the reality of the situation, that this is an old story in a new dress. That won’t, however, stop investors from assuming something is wrong in Cupertino, and that Apple is losing direction. But there hardly seems to be any evidence for such a conclusion.

Indeed, there’s even survey from Gartner contradicting estimates from IDC that Mac sales dropped slightly in the U.S. in the last quarter. Garner says that sales were up 5.4%, and that Apple remains comfortably in the number three position. The real key is overseas sales, which have taken a larger and larger share of the company’s revenue. It may well signal yet another record quarter for the Mac, which, along with expected record quarters for the iPhone and the iPad (particularly because of the arrival of the iPad mini) should help silence the critics.

That is unless the record sales don’t quite come up to the expectations of the financial community. Yes, it may well be that some of those expectations are simply pulled out of a hat, or some dark portion of one’s anatomy. But the figures are nonetheless taken seriously by far too many people. Better to look at Apple’s own guidance, conservative as it might be, to get a sense of how well the company expected to do. If those figures are exceeded by a decent margin, why the fuss?

But while the tone is one of gloom and doom about Apple this week, media speculation continues about what sort of products the company plans to introduce this year. Will there be an iPhone mini or some other lower-cost version? What about the fate of the Apple TV, and how will Apple deal with the existing complications of TV and TV interface technology? Would it require a whole slate of contracts with carriers and contract providers, or is there a way to do it without getting those deals? When does the Apple TV hobby stop being a hobby? Or is that all a smokescreen to conceal the “real” product and service initiative Apple is developing behind the scenes?

If you can believe the silly speculation from some portions of the media, there’s no longer any sense actually covering Apple, since we know exactly what they are going to release this year. Just read the speculation, and start placing your orders when the time arrives.

What do I mean? Well, just this week, I read a number of stories suggesting that Apple is busy developing a lower cost iPhone. Well, some might call it cheap, but since Apple denies ever building cheap stuff, I’ll go for one that will cost you less money in unlocked form.

Obviously there are certain assumptions being made in stories of this sort. One is that, when the mainstream media, such as Bloomberg and the Wall Street Journal, report that Apple is planning something, it has to be true. Why would they publish it otherwise? Possibly, but it all depends on their sources, and whether those sources can be taken seriously.

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