Here are your Apple rumors and news items for Wednesday:
Buy, Buy, Buy: Shares have Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) have fallen about 8% since February. However, Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster issued a note on Wednesday to offer hope to shareholders feeling the sting. Munster says that it is “a good time to own” Apple, and that the company’s astounding growth is not over yet. He believes that the new operating systems set to debut at the Worldwide Developer’s Conference on June 6 will be a catalyst for the stock, fueling new, popular products that could help Apple’s stock finally break that $400 share price barrier. He also reiterated his belief that Apple will begin selling a high-definition television in the near future.
Thumbs Up: Apple’s laptops are already having a good year — MacBook sales were up almost 28% in the first quarter of 2011, while the rest of the PC market was down 1.2%, according to respective studies from IDC and Gartner. Now Consumer Reports, a publication that’s taken issue with some of Apple’s products in the past, has issued glowing reviews for every MacBook available, from the cheapest MacBook to the top of the line MacBook Pro. Though battery life and performance were highlighted as the laptops’ chief merits, Apple did receive relatively low scores for reliability, coming in behind Dell (NASDAQ:DELL), Sony (NYSE:SNE) and Hewlett-Packard (NYSE:HPQ) in the category.
iPhone 3GS Update: The editor-in-chief of Russian mobile phone blog Mobile-Review (via Mac Rumors) had bad news for owners of the older iPhone 3GS model on Tuesday. These phones won’t work with upcoming operating system that Apple is releasing for its portable devices later this year — meaning that newer apps using features exclusive to the operating system will be unavailable as well. The iPhone 3GS is the cheapest model of iPhone available in the U.S. At $49 with a new contract, that iPhone has been outselling high-end smartphones from other manufacturers on AT&T’s (NYSE:T) service.
As of this writing, Anthony John Agnello did not own a position in any of the stocks named here. Follow him on Twitter at @ajohnagnello and become a fan of InvestorPlace on Facebook.