Apple 2.0

Watch MarketWatch shift its Apple colors from red to green

Editorial sentiment is changing, but it may take some time to turn the ship around.

FORTUNE -- Although it was never in quite the same boat as The Motley Fool, Insider Monkey or ValueWalk, there's been a predictable cast to the Apple (AAPL) coverage on the Wall Street Journal's MarketWatch site these last few months. Typical headlines:

A New York Times anti-Apple article swallows its own premise

Once again, the paper twists itself into a pretzel to find the Apple-is-doomed angle.

FORTUNE -- Readers who remember the New York Times' 2012 investigation of conditions in the Chinese factories that build iPads and iPhones for Apple (AAPL) -- the article that described Apple as "reprehensible" and "morally repugnant" -- may be surprised if they open Tuesday's business section and read this lead paragraph:

"Terry Gou did almost everything that Apple could ask MORE

Apple cracks the Fortune 10

Jumped to No. 6 from No. 17 on Fortune's annual list of the largest U.S. companies.

FORTUNE -- On its way to the No. 6 spot in this year's Fortune 500, Apple (AAPL) passed two banks (J.P. Morgan and Bank of America), two car manufacturers (Ford and GM), two carriers (AT&T and Verizon), one PC maker (Hewlett-Packard), one petrochemical company (Valero), one health-care giant (McKesson), one mortgage re-seller (Fannie Mae) and Thomas Edison's MORE

Apple pulls away from Exxon in the battle of the market caps

The oil giant's interregnum may have been short-lived.

FORTUNE -- Two years ago Apple (AAPL) made headlines when its market capitalization (share price times number of shares outstanding) overtook Exxon Mobil's (XOM) for the first time.

In January, with Apple's share price in a tailspin, the big news everywhere from the Wall Street Journal to the Huffington Post was that Exxon was once again the market cap king -- the world's most MORE

Barclays ups its Apple price target: The first increase of 2013

Citing the stock repurchase and new products, Ben Reitzes raised his target 13%.

FORTUNE -- Like Apple's (AAPL) shares, the price targets analysts set for the company have been on a jagged downward slide since last September. Until Monday, that is.

That's when Barclays' Ben Reitzes broke the streak and upped his 12-month target to $525 from the $465 valuation he set three weeks ago, just before Apple's March quarter earnings call.

"We MORE

Apple Inc. tops Barron's 500

"Stellar operating performance finally has catapulted the company into the No. 1 spot."

FORTUNE -- I cancelled my Barron's subscription after the ridiculous cover story pictured at right, so I don't have access to this year's Barron's 500 list. But the story promoting the fact that it's topped by Apple (AAPL) -- Congrats, You Did It! -- is available to nonsubscribers.

It starts like this:

And now for some good news about Apple. Its stock might MORE

Chart of the day: Whose lunch has Android been eating?

In the U.S., it's everybody's but Apple's according to comScore.

FORTUNE -- It's often been said that Android's share of the U.S. smartphone market has come chiefly out of the hides of Research in Motion's (BBRY) BlackBerry and Microsoft's (MSFT) Windows Phone, but nothing shows this quite as clearly as Horace Dediu's charts at Asymco.com.

Not that Apple (AAPL) hasn't been hurt by the success of Google's (GOOG) mobile platform. Some of MORE

J.P. Morgan takes a deep look at a low-end iPhone

How a $350-$400 iPhone could reshape the smartphone industry.

Apple's lead over Samsung in the U.S. widened in April

But Samsung isn't falling behind the iPhone as fast as it was in February or March.

FORTUNE -- Google's (GOOG) Android, at 52%, took the largest share of U.S. smartphone sales in the three month period (Jan. - Mar.) covered by comScore's report Friday. But it managed to lose 1.4 percentage points sequentially, while Apple (AAPL), at 39%, gained 2.7.

In the Apple vs. Samsung competition, Apple widened its U.S. lead, which MORE

New Samsung Galaxy S4 TV ad: Not your parents' iPhone

At a graduation pool party, all the cool kids have the "next big thing"

FORTUNE -- It takes 1:30 for Samsung to demonstrate the Galaxy S4 feature set -- which includes, apparently, Smell-O-Vision -- by which it intends to reverse Apple's (AAPL) growing lead in the U.S. smartphone market.

See also: Apple's new iPhone ad