No merger, please
I would not be in favor of an IBM-Apple merger. While IBM has traditionally given some of its more independent-minded acquisitions a lot of lattitude (Lotus often forgets they are part of IBM, except when Variable Pay comes rolling along in the spring), it would still not be the best idea.
Apple: Right now they enjoy a lot of success from Jobs and his RDF. MacOS X still needs a lot of work before it fill the *ease of use* boots of its predecessor (yes, it stomps the traditional MacOS to dust in terms of stability and buzzword compliance, but did you expect anything less than this with ANY UNIX variant Apple might have utilized as the basis of their next OS? Stability comes without saying; ease of use is the hard part, and X has a long way to go.) Until X has successfully taken the usability crown, pray that Jobs stays at the helm. X has lots of promise, but Jobs' continual reign is a big reason some Mac users have started to defend it and its foibles as earnestly as they did the many foibles of the traditional MacOS. An IBM merger would destroy this; it would demystify Jobs at best, remove him at worse.
IBM: They don't NEED another hardware company. IBM *loses* money on PCs and struggles (all too often) with other hardware. Servers and mainframes are still profitable but IBM knows how fickle that market is---hence the big push to services. IBM just DUMPED their leading edge hardware business---best hard drives in the world but losing money. Forget it!
IBM has carved out a wonderful niche in manufacturing chips. They are delightfully mercenary and flexible when it comes to chips. IBM works on improving the fab processing, and sells it to anyone who wants to make great chips---On Demand. Bring your own chip design or buy an IBM design---whatever the heck you want. For this to succeed, IBM needs lots of chip customers and Apple looks best at the other end of the spreadsheet. The chip business for IBM has an almost servicey-twist. They don't want to sell chips per se (they have made chips for AMD among others, who DO want to sell them) but want customers to pay them to make chips for them.
Apple+IBM together: A pretty bad mix of cultures. IBM may no longer be the company of career suits (many IBMers work out of their homes. At work, they primarily go Hagar and Dockers. Execs may wear suits but then again they certainly get paid enough for the inconvenience.) Even so, IBMers aren't hippies or into the whole design boutique concept that has driven Apple sales ever since they tossed "ease of use" as their mantra.
Even Apple's most serious folk, their human factors scientists --- their User Experience people --- well, they don't live at Apple anymore. Apple has dumped the scientist (who would feel at home at IBM) for the boutiquey artist, who follows just enough of what yesteryear's Apple UI scientist came up with to fix a few of the most glaring UI issues, but only after gathering a year or two's worth of angry feedback from end users, and then figuring out how much Ease of Use to build in without sacrificing too much Cool. What drives them is COOL, and IBM doesn't get --- or gives a rat's arse -- about cool.
The two companies belong where they are---completely separate but each doing what they do best.
