The Register: Apple of IBM's eye?: "Instead, an even better and more audacious speculation is that once publicly free of the PC division IBM will either buy, or form a close joint venture with Apple to sell its PCs, which coincidentally are now built around IBM's PowerPC chip."

Oooh, Apple computers with IBM credibility and support. Nice!

Update: BTW, I think it's more likely that IBM would buy just Apple's PC business, and not Apple itself. Apple would split into two companies, Apple Computer Inc. and iTunes Inc., the former of which would go to IBM, the latter to Steve Jobs, Rubenstein and co. That might help them in the Apple Corps suit as well. I think they've been wanting to spin off the iPod and then IPO it for a while... it could attract a lot of investor attention.

The other option is IBM might license the Mac and Mac OS X from Apple. Not sure what happens to the Xserve and Xsan in this case.

Seth said IBM is too deep into Linux. They are, but they spin it as being deep into open source... and really it's deep into not-Windows. The Mac is not-Windows, and it runs on their chips. And I think IBM realizes they have a good thing with their Power6 architecture and want to take full advantage of it.

Then again, that rumour could be total bunk. Either way, it's interesting to ponder IBM's role in the Mac world.