Apple just announced their second quarter results this evening and not surprisingly the numbers are very good. As such the stock is currently soaring in after-hours trading, zooming past the $100-a-share milestone – something which I personally wasn’t expecting until the release of the iPhone in June.

So why exactly is Apple soaring? It’s simple really. Much simpler than any analyst expectations or beating revenue estimates by pennies on the dollar. In the end it comes down to this: you put out a good product and people will buy it.

Sure there have been counter examples in the past – times where the best product didn’t win out and failed in the marketplace – but one could argue that given enough capital and time those products would eventually have made it. Apple has the iPod to thank for this capital and time. Their hit mp3 player has catapulted their entire brand from has-beens to the forefront of the industry.

Apple’s computers have arguably been better then the Windows-based variety for years (at least since the release of OS X), but this alone was not enough. The computer world to most of the public is still pretty technical and so users stick with what they know. That for many years was Windows-based PCs. But in an almost drug-dealer like approach, Apple realized that if you can hook them with one product (the iPod), the customer is pretty likely to not only come back for more, but sample what else you have to offer as well (the Mac).

Microsoft, out of either arrogance or ignorance, has been relatively mum about Apple’s resurgence over the past few years. True, they are still making a ton of money off of what seem to be sub-par products like Vista, so there might be no real sense of urgency for now, but as Apple’s computer sales continue to climb upward, eventually Microsoft is going to have to acknowledge it.

But what can they do? I’ve written previously about my surprise that Vista was getting no hype (at least compared to Apple), but it’s becoming clearer and clearer that if they want to stop the trend towards Apple and even Linux (see: Dell), they need but do one thing: release a great product.

Personally I think it’s time for Microsoft to start work on a completely new operating system from the ground up. They obviously would still need to keep Windows around for all its built-in users – but with Vista they’ve seemingly proven that they can no longer build a hot new product that gets people excited from an architecture and way of thinking that is 20 years old. They are rumored to have even completely scrapped the initial version of Vista they were working on more then a year in, and started entirely anew to get what we have today…and it still failed to overwhelm.

Simply look no further then the fact that this was supposed to be Vista’s quarter. Some analysts were worried that the new Microsoft OS would bite deeply into Apple’s sales and possibly halt their growth – especially with Apple failing to deliver their new OS, not releasing any new computer hardware, and the fact that 2Q is a traditionally slow time for computer sales – but instead Apple blew everyone out of the water with record-breaking numbers.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, if there is one part of Microsoft that seems to being doing things right, it’s the Xbox 360 division. If I were Bill Gates – I would buy this new Mac Pro dream system – but I would also hire from within that team to create the new OS. The Xbox 360 Dashboard works extremely well, these people seem to know what they are doing in terms of UI – and their marketing department also seems to be much better then the rest of the company at drumming up hype.

If Microsoft doesn’t get on the ball, 20 years from now we really could be looking back upon this time as the era when Microsoft’s dominance yielded to the ‘Age of Apple‘.