You can borrow some terminology from accounting to make the discussion more clear. Present value is what you pay today. Future value is what it's worth tomorrow. When you're making an investment decision, you're (hopefully) making your best educated guess about the future value, adjusting that to the present day (discounting it against the inflation between now and then), and then deciding whether the adjusted future value is worth more than the present value. If so, you have a rational justification for buying the stock.

Of course, nobody in 1986 could have predicted that Microsoft would have 288:1 worth of stock splits over the next two decades and ultimately pay dividends that were 5x the purchase price of the stock. That uncertainty necessarily depresses the present value of the shares to a rational buyer. Nonetheless, there is still a present value and a future value and they're never the same.