It's the Apple-calypse!

So Apple has not only exceeded analysts' expectations, it has cored and baked them and served the market a big slice of Apple pie.

How big is Apple? It is bigger than the gross domestic product of Poland, Belgium, Sweden, Saudi Arabia, or Taiwan. It's bigger than the 1997 stock market. It's bigger than 10,000 Kardashians. 

10,000 Kardashians? Now that's big. But Kim likes her Blackberry better...

Why are so many alarmed at the Apple-calypse? Apple seems like a nice company. Tim Cook is a benevolent leader, the kind of guy you'd love to invite for dinner or to redesign your kitchen.

I'll never forget the first time I entered an Apple store in the early naughties. I rushed home to my husband and told him to buy some Apple stock because I had never seen anything like it. The store had a Christmas morning vibe to it--Apple elves running about, people playing, toys displayed like perfectly preserved artifacts from the future. It was the utopia of retail.

But every utopia has a dystopic undercurrent. We are afraid, not of Apple, but of our appetite for Apple. We can't get enough and now look at what we've created. An empire of gadgets. It's disturbing. At least when Exxon ruled you could picture a huge tanker among dead birds and sludge, something of heft. Microsoft was serious business and Bill Gates too nerdy to be Satan. But Apple? Toys that come to life are a familiar and horrific movie trope.

Take Toy Story from Pixar, the place Steve Jobs ruled before his triumphant return to Apple. The toys are sentient beings who perform a codependent dance with their owners. Every relationship with a toy ends in heartbreak, ruin, firecrackers. Apple is our Toy Story and with each new market cap height the Apple-calypse gets closer.

We buy our toys and now our toys are toying with us.

About the Author: Lynne Everatt is a former Globe and Mail Careers columnist, canfitpro-certified personal trainer, and the author of two books, Drink Wine and Giggle and Emails from the Edge (nominated for the Stephen Leacock award for humour). She owns a Macbook Air, iPod, iPad, iPhone and gazes longingly at Apple Watch centrefolds.