Are the tables turning again? Wall Street analysts traditionally regard Apple with the sort of disdain the rest of us reserve for puppy-kickers and arsonists, but occasionally one or two will brighten up a bit and say something positive. Now, since analysts are herd creatures by nature, every once in a while an upbeat comment about Apple by one analyst leads another one to make a tentative nod of agreement. And if any analyst sees two other analysts agreeing about something, there's a decent chance that he or she will jump in as well-- and so on and so on. It doesn't happen often, at least as far as Apple is concerned, but once in a great while the Great Analyst Herd Instinct can work in Apple's favor. (You may recall the massive 400% stock run-up that accompanied a slow buildup of analyst upgrades in 1999.)

Could this be the start of something big? BusinessWeek reports that Michael Hillmeyer of Merrill Lynch ("one of Wall Street's biggest bears" as far as Apple is concerned) upgraded his "Sell" rating on AAPL to "Neutral" about a month ago-- only after Apple's stock had increased by about 35% since he had branded it as a stinker last January, we might add, but hey, better late than never. It seems he was forced to reconsider his position following the tremendous success of the iTunes Music Store, and after poking at prodding at the numbers in Apple's most recently quarterly report, he even grudgingly boosted his forecast for next fiscal year's revenues and earnings by 10% and 16%, respectively.

So since this is all coming from a well-known Apple sourpuss, will other analysts soon follow suit? We can only watch and wait, but we sure hope so, especially given AAPL's 10% drop over the past couple of days. What we need is a good ol'-fashioned stock run-up like in the days of yore ("YORE!!"); push AAPL back up into the 70s so we can cash out just enough to score a new Power Mac G5 or two. It'd be nice to get out before the earnings warning pushes the stock off a cliff for once. (C'mon, you know us; we'd buy it all back after the plunge.)

Meanwhile, what's up with that BusinessWeek article claiming that "the hottest rumor among Mac-erati these days" is "that Apple will sooner or later have to make the jump from PowerPC to Intel chips"? What the...? Is there anyone out there who takes the IntelMac speculation seriously these days? We don't doubt for a second that Apple keeps a top secret build of Mac OS X up to date on x86 iron just in case killer bees ravage IBM's Fishkill chip plant and Motorola gets called back to the eternally dark netherworld from whence it came, but just because you stock a fallout shelter with canned goods doesn't mean you're going to be eating corned beef hash three meals a day even if the missiles stay siloed. Whoever's rating the "hottest rumors" needs to re-examine his criteria...

By the way, could we possibly start another paragraph with a question? No, probably not.

Well, this is an interesting development: eWeek is at LinuxWorld this week, hobnobbing with penguins and reporting on a demo by Sun's executive veep of software. (That's not the interesting bit.) Said veep, Jonathan "Bermuda" Schwartz, reportedly showed off something called "Mad Hatter," which is apparently a "unified desktop" composed of "a third-party Linux GUI such as GNOME, the Mozilla browser, Sun's StarOffice suite, the Evolution email server, the GAIM messaging client, and Java"; it intends to offer corporate customers an alternative to shackling themselves to Windows/Office/Exchange, and will be priced 50% to 90% lower than Microsoft's software. It's sort of a low-cost, GUI-driven, corporate-computing middle finger pointed straight at Redmond.

That, while somewhat interesting, still isn't "the" interesting bit. See, alongside Mad Hatter, Schwartz also showed off a "future 3D GUI" called "Looking Glass," which features "transparent, three-dimensional windows" and "a Mac OS X-like 'dock' containing thumbnail copies of recently viewed documents." Why the apparent resemblance to our own favorite operating system? Well, here, finally, is the interesting bit: Schwartz stated that "practically every Sun employee owns an Apple desktop at home," and he's quoted as saying that Sun would "love to partner with Apple" because "they're everyone's favorite company and iTunes is really cool."

Now, leaving aside the whole question of just what sort of partnership Sun and Apple might be able to forge, every Sun employee has a Mac? What's that about? Granted, Sun isn't exactly in the home computer business, but it still struck us as a little odd that every employee of one computer company would own computers made by someone else-- the same someone else. And given Sun's focus on Linux, it just seems kind of strange that the company's employees would be running Mac OS X instead. Chalk it all up to good taste, we suppose.

But we did a little digging, and it turns out that this is by no means an isolated phenomenon. A few well-placed phone calls to industry sources revealed that every employee of Hewlett-Packard has a computer made by Gateway. Meanwhile, everybody who works at Gateway owns an eMachines box. All eMachines employees have Dell laptops running Lindows. Everyone on the payroll at Sony's VAIO division has a high-end SGI workstation at home, while the folks at SGI all own iToasters. All Dell employees have, for some reason, Kaypros.

Every single Microsoft employee, from the guys in the mail room all the way up to Herr Ballmer himself, owns a Commodore VIC-20 and a Miner 2049er cartridge.

And Apple? Well, maybe it's just another example of thinking differently, but all Apple employees apparently own Macs-- although we did discover that over 85% of them also own Stir Crazy popcorn poppers, which we're pretty sure means something, although we're at a loss as to what. Whatever. Just be grateful that we had the self-control to refrain from saying that everyone at Dell has an outdated Wang.

You know, we seriously aren't sure if "Redmond Justice" is still on the air or not, and frankly, we can't even be bothered to expend the dozen or so mouse clicks and keystrokes it would take to find out; the Microsoft antitrust drama started strong back in the David Boies/Judge Jackson days, what with all those cliffhanger plot twists about faked evidence and no less a guest star than Avie Tevanian on the stand. But once Microsoft was found guilty and the appeals procedure kicked in, the show's writers started slacking off-- and when the entire Justice Department was suddenly recast à la the two Darrens and decided to become Microsoft's eager little lapdog during the settlement talks, the show really started to drag.

Besides, who needs shadow-of-its-former-self Classic Redmond Justice when the European spinoff is so darn hot these days? The DoJ may be rolling over on command, but the European Commission is baring its teeth and growling like Microsoft swiped its favorite chew toy. According to a Reuters article, four years into its investigation of alleged anticompetitive behavior on Redmond's part, the EC feels it has a "strong case against Microsoft" and will seek a fine "linked to the severity and duration of Microsoft's perceived offense." Says a spokesperson for the Commission, "at this stage, we have so much evidence and we are in possession of such substantive a file that we believe any decision we take will withstand scrutiny of the European court."

Sounds like Microsoft's in for a serious continental-style beatdown, right? Well, we're not exactly dancing a jig just yet, since the Justice Department also had a mountain of evidence, twelve smoking guns, and a videotaped confession of Bill Gates saying "yeah, we did all that stuff, neener neener neener, just try and stop us, thppbbbbt," and apparently all it took was a few hanging chads for "let's break up Microsoft" to turn into "let's bake Microsoft brownies and give it a nice backrub." Barring any pod-person-style personality transplants, however, it sounds like the EU will indeed be calling for some stiff penalties, including a hefty fine, a requirement to stop shoving Windows Media Player down people's throats (either by removing it from Windows or by shipping Windows with, say, QuickTime as well), and a possible mandate to make source code for its server software available to third party developers.

Of course, no matter what the outcome, Microsoft will survive; while a potential fine of $3.2 billion may sound like a lot to mere mortals such as ourselves, it would barely put a dent in Microsoft's $49 billion pile of cash. (According to BusinessWeek, Microsoft made $1.6 billion in conservative investments alone last fiscal year, so there's no need to get all teary-eyed for them.) In fact, with that kind of cash, we're not entirely sure why Microsoft doesn't just pay off the remaining six continents (well, five; North America's covered by the U.S. "we pwomise to be good" settlement unless Canada wants to leap into the fray) and then violate antitrust law as often as it likes worldwide. Now there's an investment.