The official story is that Steve Jobs has turned down the offer to become Apple's new CEO. (Contrary to popular belief, he never was the CEO before; he was the co-founder and once the chairman, but not the CEO.) But the truth of the matter is that he is running Apple, probably with more control than he ever had, even though he is not officially the head of Apple, merely a "consultant". Besides, he has a $500M stake in Pixar that likely colors his decisions quite a bit.

It may be that he is reluctant to officially take the reigns as that might scare off any potential new CEO. It may also be that he is comfortable running things behind the scenes. Even though Apple bought NeXT, it is NeXT that is running Apple. When Gil Amelio was ousted he took Ellen Hancock down with him. She was the CTO before being "aided" by Avie Tevanian, a NeXT executive. So, the engineering crew at Apple is now headed by NeXT engineers (which is not necessarily a bad thing).

Since Steve Jobs is on good terms with Larry Ellison, Apple may move towards the sub-$1000 network computer market that Oracle covets. It seems likely that Apple will release Rhapsody, the code name for the next Mac OS that is not a follow-on to the recently release Mac OS 8 but rather is based on the NeXT OS, to run on Intel machines. That would please Intel, but peeve IBM and Motorola, who provide the PowerPC for the current Macs.

With Apple stock in the mid-teens, investors and Mac fanatics are looking for any sign of good news to bump up the stock. Just the rumor that Steve Jobs might be back at Apple's core sent the stock up 5% yesterday.

From the Apple Computer, PC Week, Wall Street Journal, and other sources.

www.srtilley.com