Sigh... We're trying hard to stay open-minded about the whole Sears iMac rollout, we really are. Overall, the Mac community seems to be walking a surreal line between picking a fight and being overly charitable. On the one hand, we're all more than a little tired of the way things turned out at CompUSA and, especially, Best Buy-- poorly-maintained demo Macs, boxes and ladders blocking access to the Apple merchandise, salespeople who would ignore people who wanted to buy a Mac, other salespeople who would push the PCs instead, and even salespeople who would flat out insult anyone who dared to consider getting a Mac instead of a Wintel box. Given all that ugly history, Mac users are quick to find fault with Sears in hopes that any problems can be corrected before "Best Buy Syndrome" takes up permanent residence.

On the other hand, having seen the whole Best Buy relationship shatter into a gazillion pieces, many Mac users are advocating patience and understanding as Sears ramps up its whole iMac-selling operation. The logic there is that we want to foster a friendly and loving relationship with Sears and its 800 stores nationwide-- too much criticism up front will just make them defensive and mean. Fair enough; after all, selling iMacs isn't like selling other appliances, or even other computers, and it'll take time to get things right. CompUSA, while still far from perfect, is miles better overall than it was at the commencement of the whole store-within-a-store thing. So we're trying very hard to give Sears the time it needs to set things up right.

That said, we had been given every indication that the "official" iMac-at-Sears launch date had moved from last weekend to this weekend. Unfortunately, we don't see a whole lot of difference in the reports coming in from the field; it's a week later, but the display iMacs are still not running demo software, there are still no brochures, and the price is still $1299-- a hundred bucks higher than anywhere else. About the only positive development we've yet seen (and it's a bit of a stretch to call it "positive," really) is that the reason for the higher price has been explained by special promotions throughout this month, during which customers will be able to take 5% off the iMac's price. That puts the final cost at $1234, which still isn't terrific, but at least it's a bit better. And you can put it on your Sears card...

Ah, QuickTime-- Apple's multimedia architecture which has been bringing video to the desktop for, what, seven years now? If you translate computer years into Hollywood years, QuickTime's probably long overdue for a lifetime achievement award-- but that doesn't mean the old dog isn't picking up lots of new tricks. Now QuickTime 4 is all the rage, what with its spiffy new space-age look, its MP3-compatibility, and its ability to stream live video over the Internet. In fact, we bet that most of the millions of people rocking along with QuickTime 4 have pretty much forgotten that it's not even officially "done" yet; the latest version appears to be beta 24, and while we personally haven't experienced much trouble with it, we're always a bit irrationally concerned when running software with a "b" in its version number. So we, for one, have been waiting for Apple to push the 1.0 (or is it 4.0?) version out the door.

And word around the water cooler is that we won't be waiting much longer. Various sources have come forward to say that Apple's software perfectionists are just about ready to affix their seal of approval and foist it upon a world of media-hungry netizens. Some say the software is officially at "golden master" status, some say it's not quite there but really close-- either way, we won't be surprised to see it hit the servers as early as Monday. Nor will we be surprised if the final release includes bookmarks to a spicy melange of live streaming content; for those of you who wouldn't exactly call BBC World, Bloomberg TV, and WGBH public television "spicy," okay, fair enough, but faithful viewer Damon Schreiber has us thinking that Apple may be throwing a little pizzazz into the mix...

See, Damon was an attendee at the New Media show in Toronto last week, and the keynote speaker was Frank Casanova, the head marketing guy for QuickTime. Frank hinted strongly that QuickTime 4 was well on track for a Monday release, but what Damon found even more interesting was what was in Frank's Favorites drawer-- namely, "two icons clearly labelled FOX. One was FOX sports," though the other wasn't too clear; we're hoping for FX. Frank alluded to those Favorites in a roundabout way, saying, "You can see some of the new people we're working with..." So when QuickTime 4 does ship, here's hoping that we can download a little X-Files action along with all of the financial news, world news, and the Antiques Roadshow.

Okay, we're big enough to admit it: we got suckered by the CNET article referring to the "mysterious iMac" at last week's Computex convention in Taiwan. If you don't know what we're talking about, don't bother loading up the article now-- it has since been edited to remove all reference to the "mysterious iMac," which, in itself, could be viewed as mysterious. The reality, unfortunately, simply seems to be that CNET wanted to edit out some information that was both unintentionally misleading and just plain wrong. When faithful viewer Tim Rzeznik pointed us to the story, however, the iMac info was there; Umax, once one of the "Big Three" Mac cloners and now best known as a maker of scanners, was showing off a new scanner product using "an Apple iMac with a 17-inch screen that pivots on a tripod."

So of course our active little imaginations jumped into hyperdrive as we wondered just how Umax could have gotten hold of a pre-release top-secret 17" iMac and how they could have the gall to put it on display at a huge trade show for all to see. Was it corporate espionage and revenge on the Apple that cost them millions in the cloning debacle? All kinds of terrific scenarios flooded our minds as we considered the possibilities. Sure, the article quoted a Umax representative as saying, "we just bought it," but what would you expect him to say? "We secretly sent corporate spies to infiltrate Apple's secret development laboratories as employees, where they've been working diligently for a year and a half gaining everyone's trust so they could then steal a prototype of the iMac II and smuggle it back to Taiwan?" Yeah, right.

So, yup, we admit it-- it never once occurred to us that the 17" iMac on a tripod that Umax "just bought" was simply an Apple Studio Display. Not until The PowerBook Zone alerted us to this simple and obvious answer did the facts fall into place with an audible click. Oh, well-- so much for that conspiracy theory. But that doesn't mean there aren't undercover Umax operatives collecting data on, say, the consumer portable right this minute...