Macworld Expo keynotes are all about surprises, which is why it's no surprise that discriminating Apple watchers are getting burned out on the heavy volume of P1 rumors. After all, even with the rumored disinformation floating around, once the P1 is finally unveiled, what are the odds that any of its specifications are really going to shock anyone? At this point, the P1 will only surprise us if the price is too high-- or if it doesn't make an appearance at all. That's why lots of Apple fans are starting to focus their speculation abilities on other potential surprises for next week, on the basis that Steve Jobs would never disappoint us by announcing only the P1. Our "alternate surprise" of choice focuses on the alleged Apple-Palm project and the eventual successor to the Newton.

Let's recap some of the news in the post-Newton Apple PDA story. First, we know Steve Jobs unsuccessfully tried to buy Palm a while back, hinting that he had no objections to the concept of an Apple handheld computer per se-- he just hated the Newton. And now it seems that Steve also recently made a play for Handspring, the new company headed up by Palm's original founders who seek to make Palm OS devices for children. (Thanks to faithful viewer Aaron for clueing us in Handspring's focus while their web site was down-- not that the web site says a whole lot when it's up, anyway.) Apple Insider has more on the attempted purchase, which was also unsuccessful. Steve may have a lot of strong talents, but apparently corporate takeovers isn't one of them. At least, unless it's his own company he's taking over from the inside...

Anyway, the "drop back and punt" play is apparently a deal with Palm that would not only result in Apple selling its own co-branded Palm OS devices, but also might throw some Apple developers over the fence to work at Palm. But if you're waiting for the Palm to get more Newton-like, don't hold your breath; reportedly he often referred to the pioneer handheld he disliked so much as a "scribble toy." Excuse us, Steve, but we at AtAT like our Newton because it's a "scribble toy." We happen to like the way it set out to mimic an intelligent notepad and think it succeeded quite well. We like being able to write where we want the text to go, to sketch a quick diagram and have the OS clean up its lines and curves as we draw, to scratch things out and watch them disappear in a puff of smoke. Ah, well... apparently we're grounded in the age of PDA dinosaurs. Here's hoping that whatever comes out of the Apple-Palm deal has its own unique appeal. And here's hoping that we hear something about it next week...

If your attention span is somehow even shorter than ours, pat yourself on the back-- that's a pretty noteworthy accomplishment. Hey! You! Over here... Hello, remember us? Okay, now focus. We were saying that if your attention span is even shorter than ours, then you got bored with all the P1 rumors quite a while ago, moved on to the Apple-Palm thing, got tired of that, and are now ready for the next set of product rumors to entertain and amuse. Which means that you've probably moved onto this whole Apple-Swatch team-up, especially since Swatches tend to be bright and attention-grabbing, so maybe you'll be able to keep your eyes (and your mind) on the issue for more than thirty seconds.

Still with us? Here's the deal: a Swiss Mac site is reporting that Apple has indeed partnered with Swatch, as many of us would have assumed based on the vast suffusion of warm, happy feelings emanating from Apple's site about Swatch's Internet time gimmick, the Swatch Beat. Remember, Apple's site turned into a Palm love-fest not too long ago, right about when the reports of the Apple-Palm partnership started to flouri... Hey, where are you going? Okay, okay, no digressions. Swatch! Bright colors! Crazy patterns! Are you still here?

So the rumor is that Apple is working with Swatch on making a watch-and-mousepad combo that makes it easier to check your email on other people's computers. From what we can determine, the idea is that the watch stores your mail server info, login name, password, etc. and can relay that information to any computer equipped with the special mouse pad. You wave your wrist near the mouse pad, it grabs the info, and tells the computers to initiate a connection and download your email. The watch does not actually check email itself, or store it, or let you take it with you-- at least, that's what we infer from the brief report. Think of it as sort of like a Mobil Speedpass for email. Just as the Speedpass lets you buy gas at any Mobil station just by swiping your keychain across the sensor, the Apple Swatch will let you check your email at computers with the special mousepad without requiring you to enter your server name and all that stuff. Kind of neat, but since it doesn't let the user carry email messages away on his/her wrist, is it cool enough to keep the attention of the truly flighty? Hello?... Hmmm, apparently not...

Now that Apple's stock has blasted past a six-year high following last week's upgrade by BancBoston, lots of us are wondering what'll happen next. AAPL lost a little ground on Monday; dollar signs appeared in shareholders' eyes with an audible cartoon "ding" as profits were collected, but the stock is still hovering well above $50. It's hard to believe it was bottomed out at $13 a share about a year and a half ago. What we're wondering is this: will we see the now-traditional stock deflation following Apple's announcement of its third-quarter financial results on Wednesday?

See, after the massive red ink spills of years past, once Apple started posting profits-- and consistently beating Wall Street estimates-- we figured that the stock would go up. Instead, every time Apple announces that they turned another profit (and a larger one than the analysts predicted), the stock seems to sustain a mild beating. Don't ask us why; we couldn't even hazard a guess. We're just waiting for the next quarterly results on Wednesday evening to see if Apple can continue its Street-beating streak. Then we'll await Thursday's stock activity to see what ensues. (By the way, don't forget to enter the Beat the Analysts contest if you haven't already-- you have until 2 PM EDT on Wednesday to enter your guess!)

Whatever happens to Apple's stock after the quarterly results, it'll just be a prelude to next week's Macworld Expo, which is when we expect the serious activity to kick in. In the meantime, though, you can bask in the irony of Apple being the darling of Wall Street while Compaq and Dell are slowly turning into whipping boys... MacCentral points out a CBS MarketWatch report from last week which describes the bizarre reversal of fortune: "Holding a stock 50 percent below its highs has Compaq shareholders ready to crash, Kamikaze-style, into company headquarters; and although their stock gained 7 percent Friday afternoon, the previously boisterous Dell faithful have needed an occasional slap on the forehead just to stay awake." It's a topsy-turvy world, yes it is...