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.

Read it!