Buy Apple/AAPL Now?

A friend and I were talking on the phone yesterday about Apple/AAPL and whether he should buy it now. I talked about my owning it at 14 and selling it the day before it jumped to 40 on iPod sales news. I bought it again at 90 and it went to 180. I sold half at 180 and the other half in the 145 range. Now it's sitting at 180+ and I'm thinking I left some money on the table, but I also have been sleeping better. Once a stock feels like the speculators have moved in I tend to sell it and stay away from it and AAPL seems like the speculators have moved in. I love Apple and think they are hitting on all cylindars (which is great), but I also like things that go up at a nice steady pace. Once they go off the chart there really isn't a lot to back up and look at from a historical perspective.

One thing you can look at is P/E ration. I use Yahoo Finance to look at these. Anything in the 15-20 range is reasonable. How do I know this? I don't, it is just something I picked up somewhere. I barely even know what the P/E (Price to Earnings) is or how it is calculated so if you are reading this, eat some salt.

Take a look at the P/E for AAPL. (Today 38.18. Estimate in 1 year 29.20).
Take a look at the P/E for MOT. (Today 22.65. Estimate in 1 year 21.44).
Take a look at the P/E for NOK. (Today 8.61. Estimate in 1 year 9.25).
Take a look at the P/E for IBM. (Today 16.38. Estimate in 1 year 13.09).

Compared to the two cell phone manufactures MOT/NOK, Apple is very high. MOT is only high because they are doing so poorly financially that it looks like it should be going down even farther...? The NOK P/E ration seems really low, but this is the nature of the cell phone industry, no one is really making much money.

Compared Apple to IBM from the computer side and you see the P/E is over double IBMs. To me, all these signs point to an over inflated stock and that speculators are buying for no solid reason except that they know Apple is hitting on all cylindars. Apple is a great company that I love, but to me it is even more dangerous because even though they are making a really cool phone, they are getting into a market that has some big giagantic companies who are all struggling to make a profit. I'm staying away, but I don't see any reason why it won't got to 220 soon.