Why doesn't the world's richest company make better software?

People who make their money on selling shares claim Apple stock will rise ...

Apple expected to become world's first trillion-dollar company by 2014 

... Shares of Apple have been projected to reach $1,000 in calendar year 2014, which would give the company a market capitalization of about a trillion dollars...

Maybe they're right, though similar things were once said of Microsoft -- and probably Hughes in its heyday. Certainly I cannot remember a company like Steve Jobs' Apple.

Which brings me to a puzzle. With all of its vast wealth, why isn't Apple's product quality better?

Over the past few weeks, for example, I've spent far too many hours managing quality problems in OS X Lion, iMovie, Aperture, iCloud and Time Capsule. Not to mention iWork.

Apple's software quality isn't necessarily worse than Microsoft or Adobe's quality, but it's not much better. So why don't they produce better quality products? It's clearly not a matter of money. Perhaps more importantly, will they ever pay a price for their poor quality?

I remember when Dell's product quality fell. It was a few years before their share price declined ...