Holy flying lutefisk, one of the higher-ups at BusinessWeek apparently got beaned by a wayward iPod or something, thinks he's Steve Jobs, and declared this to be All-Apple Week down there at the BW headquarters! Man, talk about a slew of raw material from which to choose; it's like the lunch buffet down at Akbar India, only without Chana Masala and with only half the selection of chutneys. Let's see, here... we could talk about Stephen Wildstrom complaining that he has to keep writing about Apple because those durn fools in Cupertino won't knock it off with the innovating, already. Or we could tackle the interesting little article about how Mac OS X and the Xserve are finally letting Apple get its foot in the door in business IT environments, lack of beige notwithstanding. Or maybe we should go the lighter route, and discuss Haddad's recent followup piece on bands that object to the iTunes Music Store on "artistic" (or is that "arti$tic"?) grounds. On the other hand, we could go all Big Picturey and dissect the centerpiece on Apple's "strategic shift" to a less computer-centric, more Sony-like focus. Why, we haven't seen this much breadth of choice since a thunderstorm briefly granted us access to every cable channel on the dial! (Well, except for "those" channels. Darn prude thunderstorms.)

But we've made up our minds, and decided to ignore just about the whole pack o' Apple-y goodness and focus in like a freakin' laser on a single interesting quote in the enterprise article, as called out by MacRumors: "Next, Apple's newest version of OS X, called Panther-- which is scheduled to debut later this year-- will let corporations run Windows applications on their Macs." Hmmmm. Did Apple decide that Panther's reported ability to run Windows apps was just way too minor to mention at WWDC, unlike such earthshattering features as fast PDF rendering and built-in fax support? Did it simply slip Steve's mind? Or was it just a deep dark secret buried among Panther's "over 100 new features" that Apple wanted kept under wraps as a grand surprise until the OS was winging its way to store shelves?

Oh, the rumorological implications are staggering. Apple buying FWB (note the "Under New Management" sign) and building the long-awaited, long-delayed RealPC OS X (temporarily "removed from the web site," wink wink) into Panther! An enhanced Aqua port of WINE running atop Apple's own super-secret, super-speedy x86 emulation engine! The rebirth of Red Box for PowerPC! Any or all of these so ridiculously tweaked for the G5 that a new Power Mac can run Windows apps faster than the fastest Wintel money can buy, and still have enough cycles left over to balance your checkbook and find a cure for cancer! We're yelling and we don't know why! It's far too late to stop now! CHICKENS MAKE LOUSY HOUSE PETS!

Oop-- wait, hold the phone. It turns out that the BusinessWeek article was corrected even as we were foaming at the mouth over the possibilities of built-in Winulation; now the relevant passage has been changed to read: "Next, Apple's newest version of OS X, called Panther-- which is scheduled to debut later this year-- coupled with new emulation software from Microsoft will let corporations run Windows applications on their Macs more smoothly." So apparently this was just a simple mistake transformed into a half-assed reference to Microsoft's stated plans to make its recently-acquired VirtualPC available as a bundled component in certain future versions of Office for Macintosh. Big whoop.

Now, it's not like BusinessWeek never makes mistakes; heck, Haddad's piece even links to the wrong stock symbol, which we figure must be some sort of mortal sin among business publications. But if you're desperate to cling to speculation about some sort of integrated x86 emulator in Panther, we suppose you could always interpret BusinessWeek's "correction" as a quickie Jobs-mandated coverup following the unintentional leak of ultra-confidential info. Bonus points to conspiracy nuts who dig up evidence of the sudden violent deaths of several BusinessWeek staffers this morning, with only an empty Evian bottle and some turtleneck lint found at the scene of the mayhem...