Ever since Silicon Valley tech visionary Steve Jobs brought the original iPhone to market over fifteen years ago, Apple has held itself out at the very front of the consumer durables market globally as an outright leader.

Along with Korean rival Samsung, Apple products are covered by billions of people; the latest hardware or software release rivalling A-list movie premieres in high profile publicity.

This level of ingraining into everyday society worldwide has positioned Apple at the very forefront of publicly-listed corporate multinational giants, and on the NASDAQ exchange, it is one of the most traded stocks from one of the world’s most well-capitalised and stable companies.

Given this level of stability and global market saturation, peaks in the value of Apple shares are rare. However, yesterday at approximately 12:30 EST, during the New York trading session, Apple shares suddenly jumped in value to $184.76 at FXOpen, which is a record high.

This is not just significant news. It is huge. In 43 years of existence, the value of the company has not come anywhere near its peak, which was reached yesterday.

And herein lies the crux – the description in the past tense.

Yes, Apple stock reached an all-time high yesterday lunchtime, but it was soon over, and by 15.30 EST, it was back down to $179, which was lower than the opening point on Monday morning.

$179 is still relatively high, though and still represents a higher point than the majority of the valuation of shares ever since Apple listed its shares on a public exchange in 1980!

What caused the sudden spike and sudden tailing off?

Technological development is currently at one of those milestone points, just as it was at the dawn of the smartphone era in the mid-2000s. It took everyone away from desktop computing and onto mobile-first, app-based lifestyles, changing the entire fabric of social and business interaction.

Today’s change is centred around Web 3, virtual reality and artificial intelligence (AI).

The amount of AI-related hyperbole across the news channels these days is just as mind-boggling as the .com euphoria a quarter of a century ago during the era of Microsoft’s dominance of personal computing and enablement of start-ups and the smartphone phenomenon, which Apple created.

Apple’s announcement yesterday that the new Vision Pro headset is about to head onto the market was surrounded by superlatives and claims it is the most significant hardware product launch since the iPhone itself.

This new Vision Pro headset costs a fortune – $3,500 in the United States, which is the first market in which it has become available – and projects apps and internet sites in front of the field of vision of the wearer, making it a wearable device that resembles ski goggles, and takes the world of the new age of the internet – Web 3 – away from handheld devices and directly into the field of vision of its user.

For those concerned about the future of smartphone users being one of the zombies who are distanced from the real physical world, whose eyes are invisible and who coast around, oblivious to the natural or built world, absorbed in their virtual world of social media, email, messaging apps and games, Apple offers some degree of comfort.

The company states that these new goggles enable other people to see the eyes of the wearer and that they are akin to sports goggles or sunglasses rather than a route to ex-communication from the real world.

Who knows.

What we do know is that the release of this product sent Apple shares rocketing to an extent never seen before.

Whether that is a sudden blip and it’s now back to normal, or whether the world is now ready for the age of the automatons is open to debate.

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