A Good Year For Apple Ends On A Sour Note.

Take a long, cold, hard look at Apple in 2006. The year started with a huge bang at Macworld San Francisco.

Intel Macs. More Intel Macs. New iPods. Mac OS X Leopard preview. iTV. And a stock scandal that won’t go away.

Until this week, Apple’s owned 2006 with a string of product announcements and the standard hype and hoopla we’ve come to expect from our favorite Cupertino computer maker.

Review the year. What’s not to be proud of? Record sales, record profits, record stock price, record mind share. It’s all there.

Macworld’s review of the year past covers all the high points and none of the low points. Were there low points? Not much innovation, but a little of everything a stock owner and customer want.

The year started off and ended much different. January brought us an Intel iMac and a matching Mac mini. Music lovers got an iPod Hi-Fi. And a whole new line of iPods just in time for the holiday season.

What’s not to like? What wasn’t to like about the whole year?

Faster chips. Faster machines. Windows on a Mac. 2006 had it all. Yes, it had it all. Including drama.

Drama? We don’t need no stinkin’ drama!! But we got it anyway in the form of a stock option scandal that just won’t go away.

While stock watchers and media pundits say nothing much will come of the backdating of stock options at Apple, others are not so sure, and, like a bad blind date, bad news stalks Apple daily as the year draws to a close.

Financial Times added fire and fuel to the flickering flame of an issue with news of possible falsification of documents in the sticky scandal.

Fake documents? So says Cal Law, among others.

Look, we’re talking about Apple, right? Folks in Dubai love Apple so much they’re willing to put up a skyscraper that looks like a neon iPod.

That homage to Apple and the iPod should be the icing on the cake for a delicious 2006. Instead, we’re being force fed a prison diet of cruel gruel news and scenarios where Apple’s famed leader may be wisked off to jail.

Hey, it happened to Martha Stewart over a piddly amount of stock. It could happen to Steve Jobs and his former Apple cohorts.

Instead of a chorus of highlights for 2006, this scandal that won’t die is rapidly becoming the sour note that’s heard around the world.

What will happen to Apple if Steve Jobs is forced to resign in disgrace?