Introduction
One of the bullish themes of this article comes from an anecdote I came across a while ago about Apple (AAPL) being a software company. Supposedly when Steve Jobs was doing an iPhone road show in early 2007, a money manager questioned how its cool touchscreen interface could prevent price competition. Couldn't every competitor do touchscreens, too? Jobs responded that AAPL was software company. A 2011 interview shows him indeed saying that AAPL viewed itself as a software company.
That insight suggests why AAPL's relative P/E has moved up over the years: