Ladies and gentlemen, we have officially arrived at the conclusion that Apple's forthcoming handheld device is nothing more than an elaborate April Fool's joke gone way too far. After all, we've been waiting for this thing ever since Apple canned the Newton over two years ago; at that time the semi-official word was that Apple would return to the handheld market in 1999. So we followed the vague rumors wherever they took us: around the circular path of "Mac OS Lite," up the virtual dead-end enigma of "Columbus" (remember that?), and along the highway known as "P1" that transformed in mid-trip from a handheld to a six-and-a-half-pound iBook. So here we are two years later, still thumbing a ride on the rumor du jour: Apple's top-secret collaboration with Palm. And just like clockwork, Mac OS Rumors throws another curve in the road: now the "iPad" is supposed to be a full-fledged Mac OS X device. Stop the world, we want to get off.

Here's the latest from MOSR: Apple's handheld is not going to be a $200 Palm OS-based handheld, as previously expected. Now the "iPad" is going to be a Mac through and through. It'll be based on a "simplified" UMA-2 motherboard, it'll have an honest-to-goodness PowerPC processor, and it'll run Mac OS X, Aqua and all. What's more, while the size of this thing is unspecified, you can take a hint from the statement that the iPad will use a "trackpad/stylus combination" for input; we're thinking "bigger than a Palm, smaller than a laptop." All this for just $599.

Okay, so it sounds cool. But if these latest iPad rumors are true, then it'd mean Apple has learned zilch since it deep-sixed the Newton. Say what you will about it, but the last incarnation of the Newton was a fantastic device. It failed primarily because, while it was much more capable than other PDAs, the market was very willing to give up advanced features like a 320x480 screen, a fully-functional TCP/IP stack, two PCMCIA slots, and real, working handwriting recognition to save on size, weight, and cost. The Newton MessagePad 2100 weighed over a pound, couldn't fit into most pockets, and cost on the order of a grand. Most people just wanted to track their addresses and appointments; why shell out for a luggable Newton when the Palm was smaller, lighter, and cheaper?

So the very idea that Apple's working on a replacement for the Newton (which the company dubbed a failure) that appears to inherit all of the Newton's shortcomings, well, we keep expecting Steve Jobs to leap out from behind a bush and yell "April Fool's!" We'll reserve final judgment until this vaporous device actually ships, of course, but we're increasingly convinced that Apple's handheld is nothing more than disinformation of the highest order. And if Apple doesn't announce something soon, it's Palms and second-hand Newtons across the board here at AtAT headquarters.