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...