Our collective head is spinning from the recent Apple Recon report on Monday's big Apple event. Anyone who watches AtAT on a regular basis will want to go check it out, but be warned-- there's so much going on in there that we can only begin to discuss it here... seriously, it's too much for a soap opera episode; it's more like an epic miniseries or educated guesses and rampant guesswork. Here's some of the twisty-turny stuff:

• Microsoft may license parts of Rhapsody for a future incarnation of Windows.
• Sun may pay Apple >$100 million in a "partnership" similar to the Apple-Microsoft deal
• Rhapsody may be the"common desktop OS" that IBM, Oracle, Sun, and Netscape have been talking about
• The Apple-Oracle merger will probably not happen, though a "partnership" is likely
• IBM may license Rhapsody, following recent meetings between Jobs and IBM's Gerstner
• Compaq may make the x86-based Rhapsody servers that Apple doesn't want to make
• Intel may appear to announce Rhapsody for Intel-- including Merced and Alpha
• The CompUSA Mac sections are only the beginning
• Apple may retarget advertising almost exclusively at the general consumer markets

And the big one... Apple Recon goes so far as to speculate that "Apple as we currently know it might be unrecognizable within the next 6-12 months." They're not talking about a merger or a buyout or even another restructuring, but a fundamental reworking of what Apple is and does, as it moves toward the "mobile and distributed computing environment" by providing NC's, etc. connected to Rhapsody servers, embracing a paradigm that is hardware- (and to a limited extent, software-) independent. We're still trying to get our minds around that one.

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For few days now, MacOS Rumors has been speculating on some kind of collaboration between Apple and Lucent Technologies, those guys who split off of Bell Labs, who have those stark white TV commercials with words being typed during the voiceover. Apparently their suspicions were heightened by the new Lucent commercial, which includes a Macintosh startup chime as the screen changes from an old monochrome green DOS-like screen to a more Mac-like deal. The commercial was just a coincidence, it turns out (the ad's creator used a Mac), but Rumors continues to report on a possible Apple/Lucent project.

What kind of project? Wireless networking. Lucent has long been a pioneer in that area; they worked on the Manta and Grouper products from Digital Ocean last year. Now Rumors is saying that future Macs may be networkable out of the box by simply putting two system nearby each other. No more wires! Keen, huh? Except that given the cost of the existing wireless add-ons, we'd expect that such a feature would pump up the price of a computer by at least $400, probably more. And throughput isn't the greatest-- while Ethernet is 10Mbps, the Manta II maxes out at only 2Mbps. So this way-cool feature almost certainly wouldn't surface in Apple's NC's, for example, since they rely on network speed to be useful. But the technology will only get faster and cheaper, so someday it may be feasible as an out-of-the-box solution. And there's no telling what top-secret stuff Lucent's still got hidden behind closed doors...

ThessaSOURCE has just posted a really nice analysis of the possibilities of an Apple-Lucent partnership, including some history on Apple's own investigation of wireless networking, but everyone seems to be assuming high bandwidth. As for us, we still happen to think that wireless remote controls are pretty cool, so we'll keep quiet. ;-)

And speaking of big companies "getting friendly," Comdex takes place in about a week in Las Vegas, and Mac the Knife is spreading rumors that heavy-hitters Sun and IBM may have an interesting announcement. They may be going steady on a joint venture that apparently involves a primo Java development system that runs under Rhapsody. If true, that could mean big things both for the viability of Rhapsody Intel among developers, and the acceptance of Rhapsody in all forms among a more general audience.

It's exciting to think that IBM may officially endorse an Apple operating system. We've already heard rumors that IBM plans to name Rhapsody the "official upgrade" to its own semi-discontinued OS/2 Warp operating system, though that seems like a real stretch. Still, it's nice to dream...