Reality just recently posted a neat little month-old tidbit that adds fuel to the rumors about Microsoft window-shopping for outside OSes (no pun intended). It seems that an Apple Road Show worker had been instructed by the higher-ups "not to confirm or deny Rhapsody's existence." Confidentially, the worker revealed that the orders to keep mum were because of an unnamed competitor's interest in the Intel-compatible version of Rhapsody. That "unnamed competitor" was anticipating problems with its current OS' direction, and was therefore scouting out possibilities to fall back on-- including Rhapsody Intel and BeOS.

Okay, okay, this anecdote is all really interesting, but we find it at least a little suspect. After all, why would Apple tell its representatives not to confirm Rhapsody's existence, when information on the next-generation is readily available all over its web site? Still, even if the anecdote itself is apocryphal, the reason it resonates is because of the elements of truth at its core. It's plain that Windows 95 isn't everything Microsoft had hoped it would be (or at least we certainly hope they didn't actually design it this way!), Windows 98 is hideously unstable in beta and may be delayed because of the DoJ's recent charges, and even NT has some irksome flaws-- at least if the bluescreens we've casually observed are any indication. Of course no OS is perfect, but Microsoft isn't stupid; there's no harm in shopping around, and if they paint themselves into a corner with the current Windows architectures, they'll be better prepared with contingency plans.

In fact, the only Microsoft move we can recall that we'd classify as "of questionable intelligence" is their chosen method of "complying" with the recent injunction against them, which amounts to a great big "Bite me!" shouted at the judge and the Justice Department...

MacOS Rumors and other sites are discussing Apple's plan to push back into the educational market-- one of the two core markets (along with "content creation") identified by Steve Jobs as Apple's targets for the foreseeable future. Until now, we hadn't seen much of a visible commitment to regaining ground lost in this market to Wintel systems, such as those schools switching over because of Intel's "migration grants." (Remember Yale?)

It seems that Apple's new strategy focuses primarily on heavy price cuts for development-related technologies like WebObjects, Rhapsody, and even possibly portions of Rhapsody source code. On the hardware end, Apple plans to have an Education area up and running in the build-to-order Apple Store by March. And these are nice plans.

But what we're not sure about is whether easier ordering and cheap/free development tools can compete with millions of dollars of free equipment in the form of Intel's migration grants. Seriously, if you were in charge of balancing your university's budget, which would you choose?

Apple's Official Naysayer Katie Cotton has officially announced what we've all known for some time: that Apple's not going to name a new CEO by the end of the year. The announcement is at InfoWorld.

No one's surprised to hear that Apple won't magically produce a CEO in the next two weeks, especially given the fact that there are no serious candidates right now. But let's not discount the possibility of a Christmas miracle! After all, what image is more Christmassy than Steve Jobs waking up and running downstairs to discover a shiny new CEO under the tree?

And in that spirit, for those of you who haven't read it yet, make sure you check out David Pogue's terrific column, "It's a Wonderful Machine."