The company's had to endure quite a number of red marks on its books recently - sweatshop iPods, hot-running laptops, the lawsuit with Creative, MacStains, malfunctioning logic boards, and their own massive LiON battery recall in the wake of the Sony battery/Dell exploding laptop scandal - but they didn't stop Apple shares from finishing 50 cents higher in the NASDAQ Friday.

Apple spokesman Steve Dowling said that the company will not be feeling any financial impact from the battery recall program - despite the fact the US Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) estimates up to 1.8 million Apple laptop batteries worldwide are covered by the recall. By comparison, Sony expects costs of between $172 million and $258 million to recover bad batteries and ship replacements. And the Japanese government had recently ordered both Sony and Dell to investigate their battery troubles, and report their findings by the end of August - or face a fine.

The battery recall is the latest in a series of "irregularities" either publicly revealed or admitted to by Apple, or accused of by third parties. The latter case is represented by the iPod sweatshop accusations leveled against the Chinese-based factories where iPod manufacturing is outsourced. Cases falling under the former include the battery recall, both of their older models and of certain batches of MacBook Pro batteries, as well as MacBook quality control issues.

But by stock performance it seems that the company's still ticking and kicking. Even if it wasn't the highest in the past year, things are still looking up for Apple.

Then again, we did say long before that any idea of an "Apple customer backlash" could be illusory.