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Marketwatch today ran the inevitable story: Apple passes Microsoft for second place in S&P 500.

Yes, Apple is now bigger than Microsoft. Marketwatch noted Apple’s $241 billion market cap to Microsoft’s $239 billion market cap.

This is what happens when a company manages to attain a high profile based on high quality and unapologetic high prices. It’s an amazing confluence, usually seen in the brief shelf life of fad products, but Apple’s not going anywhere. Instead of good luck and great timing, Apple earned this rare stature through innovative people, products and markets.

You know the products. They permeate pop culture with a confidence and cool that dares you to complain about their prices. And when you consider the context in which these things are selling, you’re onto a simple but fascinating lesson.

In an historically lousy economy, Apple not only sells music at the highest price on the internet, it competes against freaking free. Its computers cost four times as much as a PC. (Ask yourself: When was the last time anybody insisted you watch some trick they can do with their new version of Windows?) Apple’s $500 cell phone allows only one carrier while most carriers offer free phones. The company’s $200 mp3 players outsell $25 options that sound the same to the classic rock eardrum. Thousands of people each day are paying $500 for an iPad based on sheer faith that they will someday figure out why.

And Apple has $50 billion in cash and no debt.

How? Simple: They have indispensable people doing extraordinary things.

Microsoft has disposable people doing ordinary things.

How is your company facing the future?