An Apple rumor a day

Now that Apple Computer has its shitake mushrooms together, it apparently is being coveted by IBM. At least according to some speculative reports that have rattled the Mac faithful in recent days. Interestingly, that's the opposite of what was driving the buyout chatter a few years ago.

The latest round of rumors over the fate of the PC pioneer started soon after it was reported that IBM is considering selling its PC division to a Chinese company--although the details are murky on whether that would be an outright sale or some kind of joint partnership.

With IBM out of the Wintel PC business, the (formerly) Boca Raton boys would be free to "form a close joint venture with Apple to sell its PCs, which coincidentally are now built around IBM's PowerPC chip," as an opinion piece in The Register put it.

One reason for the odd pairing, according to the column: "Hitching up with Apple would provide IBM with a real inroad into the fast-growing 'lifestyle' market, something the men and women in blue suits kind of missed." (Will ThinkPads become ThinkPods, or will iPods be renamed iPads?)

While it's anyone's guess what the two companies are thinking (or not thinking), it's interesting to note that the reason Apple is apparently attractive is because it's hot, thanks to the iPod. Conversely, in 1997, while in the throws of what appeared to be a death spiral, numerous reports had the company being acquired by an investor group cobbled together by Larry Ellison, Sun Microsystems or even IBM.

Of course, what really happened is that Steve Jobs re-emerged to take over the company, and a few iMacs and iPods later, Apple is standing tall once again (even if worldwide PC market share is closer to 2 percent than to the 5 percent of a few years ago.)

Whether the speculation has any resemblance to reality remains to be seen. But considering the completely overexposed U2/iPod advertising campaign, I figured that Bono had secretly bought Apple sometime last summer.