Man, have you seen the schism in the analyst community over Apple's stock today? After a slew of upgrades sent AAPL through the roof in the past few weeks, both Smith Barney and Needham downgraded the stock last week, saying that it just couldn't go much higher. But today, as faithful viewer mrmgraphics pointed out, JP Morgan raised its estimates on Apple's earnings and revenue, acknowledging that "concerns over Apple's valuation are certainly understandable given the stock's rapid rise," but stating that "expectations for the company's revenue and profit growth may still prove conservative." Meanwhile, First Albany also raised its estimates, calling "recent weakness in Apple Computer's share price an attractive investment opportunity," and Bear Stearns reiterated its "outperform" rating (that's good) and raised its target price from $60 to $72.

And yet, Thomas Weisel just sided with Smith Barney and Needham as a Negative Nelly by downgrading AAPL from "outperform" to "peer perform." Someone lock all these guys in a big steel cage and let 'em settle things with their fists. And maybe a few folding chairs.

On the plus side, the stock's, well, on the plus side. It closed today up $3.10, despite the downgrade, but we're not sure whether that's due to the raised targets and estimates, or to the rumors of a big merger making the rounds. Check this out-- you remember last week when the research firm Gartner predicted that three of the top ten PC manufacturers would be exiting the market within three years, right? Well, faithful viewer Derrick noted that about three seconds after we'd mentioned that, IBM was rumored to be selling off its PC business to China's Lenovo. And faithful viewer Adurbe tipped us off to one mother of a related buyout scenario posited by The Register: what if IBM is ditching its PC business in preparation to buy Apple?

Yeah, we know-- Disney, Apple, same difference. Sure, it sounds wacky, but think about it, because The Reg makes several interesting points. For one thing, IBM currently sells PCs with Intel's chips inside; wouldn't it rather sell Macs with IBM chips on the motherboard? And what better way to make a buyout more palatable (antitrust-wise) to the FTC than to divest itself of its existing personal computer business first? On top of that, an IBM buyout of Apple might also explain why Apple is "noticeably absent in the Power.org lineup" announced last week, a consortium of 14 third-party companies forming "a community of Power chip enthusiasts"; if Apple will soon be part of Big Blue anyway, what would be the point? Post-merger, Macs would finally stand a chance in Big Business, while IBM would get to ditch Linux for Mac OS X on its high-end servers, while also riding Apple's coattails into the consumer space. Everybody wins.

Well, everybody except for the Mac fans to whom such a proposition is downright heresy, we suppose, and there's a valid argument there: what happens to the coolness quotient of Apple's products once its employees get assimilated into the overly-corporate corporate culture of a company named "International Business Machines"? Then again, maybe there's nothing to worry about; let's not forget that Apple is largely comprised of ex-NeXTians-- including Steve Jobs himself, of course-- who essentially took over Apple from within when Apple bought NeXT. In other words, even if IBM does purchase Apple, it's far likelier that the original IBMers would start wearing turtlenecks and blue jeans than Steve would start wearing a suit.

So, there-- does that make the prospect of an IBM-owned Apple less gut-wrenching? It doesn't? Oh, well, we tried. And it is just a rumor, after all...

You know, there's really only one thing keeping us from buying an iPod mini: it's just too small. Not in terms of dimension, of course; physically, it may be just a little slip of a thing that Midwestern moms would be totally justified in calling an "eentsy-beents," but it's not so small that we'd worry about, say, accidentally inhaling it or absorbing it through our skin or something. No, when we say "too small," we're referring to its storage size, which, at 4 GB, is really only sufficient if you have a music library consisting of fewer than 1000 songs, or if you have the uncanny ability to ascertain with near-100 percent accuracy everything that you might want to listen to before the next time you dock your iPod. Otherwise you're going to wind up getting a craving to hear that extended dance remix of "We Built This City" by Starship only to discover that you erased it from your 'Pod the week before to make room for Michael Bolton's "Can I Touch You... There?"

Well, maybe not with those particular songs. Otherwise you've got a far bigger problem than not having enough space on your iPod. Trust us.

Good news, though: questions of musical taste aside, the grapevine is rife with rumors that Apple's planning to issue a revision to the iPod mini sometime sooner rather than later, and the one thing everyone seems to agree on is that it'll boast a bigger hard disk. AppleInsider reports that the new version will surface "early next year," packing a 5 GB hard drive to bring its capacity in line with the Rio Carbon and the Creative Zen Micro, the self-proclaimed "iPod mini killers" (that probably have about 6 percent of the market combined). AI also mentions the possibility of "potential color alterations and more 'metallic' finishes"; if one of them turns out to be shiny purple, we may finally have to bite.

If you're disappointed that a 5 GB mini would simply be playing catch-up with the competition, for what it's worth, Mac OS Rumors has some slightly differing info on the minibump: reportedly the new model will appear "just after the New Year" (which can only mean Macworld Expo, natch) and will have "6 or 8 GB" of space in its trunk, not 5. If true, that'd put Apple back out in front among players in the mini form factor, at least storage-wise. (If you really think you can scrape by with 4 GB, MOSR thinks the current models may drop to $199 when the new revs are announced.)

Whether the mini moves to 5, 6, or 8 GB, at least we could finally buy one without taking a storage step backward; we're still rockin' the original first-on-the-market iPod 'round these parts, so we're at least used to the constraints of a 5 GB playlist, if not overly thrilled by them. And while it seemed tiny in 2001, the first-gen iPod seems to have swollen over the last three years to be roughly the size and weight of your average house brick. Sure, that's just relativity talking, but relativity talks kinda loud. So if Apple does in fact up the mini's storage next month-- and throws some spiffy new colors in, to boot-- we may have to start digging between the couch cushions for an extra quarter or two. Or 996.

Ah, life at One Infinite Loop: never a dull moment. At least, that's the way we imagine it: Apple employees constantly embroiled in a neverending series of high-speed car chases, daring archaeological raids on ancient temples for hidden Aztec gold, illicit office romances with the danger of discovery (and death) hovering over every stolen kiss... you know, typical corporate cubicle life, only with a little more emphasis on crocodile-wrestling to save the forgotten princess from being sacrificed to the volcano god and a little less on figuring out how to clear a paper jam in the Xerox machine.

The thing is, from time to time we experience fleeting moments of doubt during which we start to question whether working at Apple is really any more dramatic than working at any other large corporate headquarters; what if the developers in the Mac OS X department really are just debugging timing errors in Dashboard animations, and not duelling to the death with lightsabers in zero gravity for Anna Kournikova's hand in marriage as, by all rights, they should be? But something always happens to restore our faith in the vision of One Infinite Loop as a take-no-prisoners battleground of nonstop action and adventure. Take, for instance, the campus's recent invasion by representatives of Kids and Pets Against Overtime.

KAPAO, in addition to having a suitably onomatopoeic acronym that'd be right at home onscreen in a '60s episode of Batman (and possibly being the band that had that "Heart and Soul" hit in 1987) has posted a rollicking account of its visit to Apple's headquarters last Saturday. The "KAPAO Car," outfitted with a loudspeaker, drove around Cupertino broadcasting the message "WE ARE KIDS AND PETS AGAINST OVERTIME AND WE ARE HERE TO SHOUT OUT TO ALL OF YOU APPLE EMPLOYEES WHO ARE HERE WORKING LONG HOURS AWAY FROM YOUR FAMILIES ON A WEEKEND DURING THE HOLIDAY SEASON." According to KAPAO, "the employees of Apple were seen to laugh and cheer" as the car spread its message. Everything was fine-- albeit a little strange-- until KAPAO actually ventured onto Infinite Loop, at which point surprisingly humorless security guards surrounded the car with SUVs, demanded that the KAPAO rep leave, and threatened to call the Santa Clara County Sheriff.

KAPAO left Infinite Loop and instead drove up and down Mariani Avenue-- escorted by four white security SUVs who used their own PAs to continuously remind the KAPAO car to "keep moving," a situation that KAPAO referred to as a "security parade" and a "slow-speed chase." Apparently the security staff was peeved enough to hurl obscenities and make rude gestures; geez, too much overtime, fellas? Apple's other employees reportedly thought the whole thing was a hoot, but then again, KAPAO's telling of the story may not be the most impartial of accounts. Still, no one got hurt.

Okay, so a slow-speed chase ain't exactly Bullitt, but it's probably more exciting than anything that happens at most companies during the work week, let along on the weekends. And by Apple standards, maybe it wasn't quite so surreal as the company's employees being accosted in their cars by a man wearing a turtle costume, but hey, you take what you can get.