The best bet was not to play?

Woohoo! ;D
Yes it was. And I thought I was being conservative with my 780/880 guess.
You know on Jan 20th 2012 AAPL traded about the same price we are at now, and less than 75 days later it was trading $220 higher.
Back then the only news was a great earnings report.
In the next 75 days any of the following could happen as a stock catalyst:
- great Q3 earning report
- great Q4 guidance
- china mobile deal
- NTT Docomo deal
- iWatch release
- Apple HDTV release
- mid price iPhone release
- 5" iPhone release
- earlier than expected iPhone refresh
- earlier than expected iPad refresh
- major video content licensing deal arranged
- Apple launches a Netflix style competitor
- Apple launches a search engine
- Samsung/Apple settlement or major court victory
- major patent licensing deal
- Microsoft Office for iPad release
- Apple launches iBank/payment solution
- government tax repatriation deal
- collapse/major crisis of a competitor
- Apple makes an unexpected takeover offer for a well known company
- Apple buys Anki
- takeover offer FOR Apple
- the return of "...one more thing"
Each of the above things individually are somewhere on the scale from "perhaps...maybe" to "that's crazy talk" but I think adding all the chances of them up together we have a fair chance of at least one or two occurring in the next few months.