Gotta love the java!
Applets are so cute! It's ironic, though, that applets were initially thought to be Java's raison d'etre, and instead they were very nearly it's death knell. So much pointless and poorly written code. "Nervous text." Yikes.
I've seen a few business-oriented applets recently that were both useful and seemed stable, so I suppose they could still make a comeback. J2EE applications sometimes make use of applets for administration purposes. They might never be as ubiquitous as some people thought they'd be...certainly not if Microsoft has any say in the matter.