Only the fringiest of the fringe were seriously surprised by the lack of a new Apple handheld device during last week's keynote, but heck, what's life without a few borderline-psychotic pipe dreams? Besides, think of it this way: if Apple ever really does produce a new handheld, then we'll have to say goodbye to one of the longest-lived and most entertaining rumors ever to befuddle the Mac faithful. These days (and especially in this economy), we'd rather have the dream than the reality; frankly, if Apple's stock were performing like Palm's or Handspring's right now, we'd be selling pencils on the street.

The fact is, even if Apple does have a handheld ready to go (and we're not necessarily saying that's the case), the company would likely be nuts to try and launch it in this environment, no matter how gosh-darned cool it may be. So if you're still bent on the concept of an Apple-branded handheld, do what we do: stop expecting Steve to whip one out of his back pocket at the next Big Event, and just concentrate on the sketchy bits of so-called "evidence" that add to the flavor of the conspiracy theory du jour. Trust us, it's loads more fun than being disappointed every time Apple introduces new hardware that isn't teeny and stylus-driven.

For instance, faithful viewer Jacob Roebuck has the right idea: he kindly pointed out a CNET article about how Palm is formally moving forward with its plan to migrate the Palm OS platform from Motorola's Dragonball processors to ones based on ARM technology. If your response is "so what?", you're not a true Apple handheld conspiracy theorist-- if you were, you'd immediately jump on the fact that Apple used ARM-based chips in the final iterations of its Newton PDAs until Steve nixed the product line completely a few years back. There's also the little fact that Apple still holds a fair investment in ARM, which is yet another link for the happy rumormonger to incorporate into a wild and wooly "iPDA" scenario.

Let us give you a little push to start you on your way. Palm wants to ditch Motorola's pokey Dragonball chip for, say, a StrongARM so that Palm devices will finally be able to handle "more complex applications, such as video streaming and digital-audio playback." What if one of those "complex applications" is startlingly accurate true handwriting recognition, like the Newton managed to crank out at near-real-time speeds when running on a StrongARM even four years ago? Intriguing, no?

Of course, on the surface, this whole Palm OS-on-ARM thing only really helps those of you who are still expecting Apple's alleged handheld to run Palm's operating system. But what if Apple has been working on a handheld OS based on Mac OS X's core technologies and running on the ARM architecture? If the Palm OS also runs on the ARM, then it's conceivable that Apple's device could run Palm OS apps at a reasonable speed in a handheld equivalent of "Classic." See? There's plenty to work with, here. When we've got endless speculation, who needs the real thing?