And thus is any remaining pretense tossed straight out the window. Steve's claim that Apple had decided "not to use the iPod to drive people to Macs" is looking thinner and thinner, isn't it? The way Apple tells it, you'd think it was surprised at reports of a "halo effect" boosting Mac sales among the iPod-using population, as if this were a totally unplanned consequence of selling the world's hottest portable music player to Wintel users. Barely a week ago we heard reports from campus computer resellers that students were opting for iBooks and PowerBooks in vastly increased proportions due largely to their love affair with the other little chunk of portable Apple hardware they'd all used, and now Apple seems to have abandoned any remaining subtlety with its design and marketing tactics for the new iMac G5.

Yes, speaking of things looking thinner and thinner, the two-inch-thin iMac G5 was indeed unveiled at the Paris Philnote this morning, as faithful viewer Small Paul kindly informed us, and the most noteworthy aspect of its minimalist industrial design is shamelessly called out on Apple's home page: from the side, the family resemblance to an iPod in a dock is striking, and we'd be surprised if Jon Ive's directive wasn't to "make it look like the iPod's big brother." (Frankly, we're a little surprised Apple didn't give it a silver back.) Indeed, Apple is hawking the thing with the phrase "From the creators of iPod," and if that isn't an overt invitation for Wintel users in love with their iPods to consider making the switch, we don't know what is. C'mon, even the sound byte Philism in Apple's press release targets iPod owners: "Just like the iPod redefined portable digital music players, the new iMac G5 redefines what users expect from a consumer desktop."

So all of this is clearly to get the iPod-enamored Wintellians to take a look, and when they do, we think there's a good chance they'll like what they see. Somehow Apple managed to cram a whole heckuva lotta computer into just two inches of depth; compare the photos of the new iMac with similar photos of Apple's latest displays to see just how compact the actual iMac guts must be. And yet in that teensy amount of space, Apple somehow squoze in a 1.6 or 1.8 GHz G5, an 80 or 160 GB hard drive, a slot-loading combo drive or Superdrive, a reasonably decent 64 MB AGP 8X NVIDIA GeForce FX 5200 Ultra graphics subsystem, and a full complement of ports. Even the power supply is built in-- no brick on the floor, which for which feature alone the iMac G5 deserves to win a few dozen awards.

Granted, anyone expecting these new iMacs to deliver full-on Power Mac G5 performance is sure to be disappointed; the frontside bus is "only" 533 or 600 MHz, the RAM maxes out at "only" 2 GB, and the FireWire ports are "only" the 400 Mbps flavor. As usual, there's no speed listed for the slot-loading combo drive or Superdrive, but since the drives are mounted vertically, they might be a bit slower than the state of the art. And even the top-of-the-line iMac only comes with 256 MB of RAM standard, which is practically a crime-- but with prices ranging from just $1299 to $1899, we doubt anyone will have much right to complain. We can't say for sure until the benchmarks are in, but G5 power built into some gorgeous displays for well under two grand just might turn out to be the best bang for the buck Apple has ever delivered. Think of it this way: the 20-incher costs only $600 more than the 20-inch display does, and you get a full-on G5 Mac that takes up literally zero extra space.

We'll have to wait until they ship in "mid-September" to get the real low-down, but so far we're not finding much to complain about. The blank space beneath the LCD is a little offputting, perhaps, but that's where the stickers go. We expect some people are going to dislike the new iMac's form factor (which at best is decidedly less iconic and distinctive than the previous two designs, and at worst looks like an eMac that got caught in a hydraulic press), but from our perspective it's simplest to think that there really isn't any form factor to dislike in the first place: it's an Apple display with an invisible G5 mysteriously attached. (Ooooo, spooky.)

Like we said, considering what the machine manages to do, we don't feel overly strongly about the look of the iMac G5 either way, so we're standing well off to the side while those who are a bit more pro or con on the subject hurl opinions, insults, fists, lawn darts, etc. at each other. And guess what? There are actually quite a few others here on the sidelines, but instead of relaxing quietly to the soothing soundtrack of witty barbs and the occasional shriek accompanying a lawn dart-related maiming like we are, they're all excitedly huddling around well-worn printouts of the new iMac's tech specs and jumping up and down. See, these are the guys who wouldn't care if Apple shipped a consumer desktop that was fuchsia and chartreuse and molded from the hindquarters of a hippo with psoriasis, because 1) they're professionals, not consumers, and 2) they can't get down to business with a desktop that just sits there. These are the Road Warriors, and they need Apple's pro portables, otherwise known as PowerBooks. And many of them are practically foaming at the mouth right about now.

The thing is, not all of them are foaming for the same reasons. Some are just apoplectic that Apple has broken its longstanding tradition and released a consumer Mac that outpaces one of its pro ones; even the current top-of-the-line PowerBook only packs a 1.5 GHz G4, and now the entry-level iMac (at less than half the price) has a 1.6 GHz G5. Sure, you pay for portability, but as far as we can recall, this is still the first time in recent memory that a consumer Mac has shipped at a faster clock speed than a pro model-- let alone with a next-generation processor, to boot.

The other guys, though, are foaming with anticipation, because they're seeing all the guts of a G5 Mac crammed into a system that's just two inches thick. And after hearing time and time again (from Apple, no less) that stuffing a G5 into as tight a space as necessitated by a PowerBook is still waaaaay off in the future, the new iMac would seem to be the proof that a G5 PowerBook isn't as distant a dream as they've been led to believe. Granted, there are still hurdles to clear; for one thing, two inches is about an inch thicker than a PowerBook can realistically get. But keep in mind that while the 17-inch LCD that Apple uses in its PowerBooks and its displays are probably the same, the backlights placed behind them are not-- Apple tends to use brighter and bulkier backlights when it doesn't have to worry about saving battery power. So a fair chunk of that two-inch thickness in the iMac G5 might be backlight-related, and therefore irrelevant in a PowerBook G5 discussion.

There's also the matter of all that extra space underneath the iMac's screen, which would obviously make a 17-inch PowerBook nearly four inches deeper, and no one's going to lug something like that all over creation. But keep in mind that the iMac's speakers live in that space, and bounce sound downward off the desk; we have no idea how much of that space those speakers take up, but bearing in mind that a consumer desktop (especially one touted as "built for iLife") has to have some decent sound to it, there's at least a chance that eliminating those particular speakers might allow the footprint to shrink a little. And don't forget that the iMac's entire power supply is internal! Ripping that out in favor of the traditional PowerBook AC adapter ought to free up a lot more room.

Room for the battery that'd have to be added, that is. Hmm. Never mind.

Whatever. Look, no one's suggesting that Apple can just toss a hinged screen on an iMac, spray-paint it aluminum, throw it in a black box, and ship it as a PowerBook G5. But considering that the only systems in which we've seen G5 processors running to date are the Power Mac (with its nine fans, four thermal zones, and an enclosure the size of Montana) and the Xserve (which is at least thinnish-- but over two feet deep), the iMac G5 is clearly a massive leap forward towards a PowerBook G5 from those two behemoths. At a time when the rumor mill is only talking about the next PowerBook revision only upping the G4 from 1.5 GHz to 1.6 GHz, the iMac G5 represents hope that we really will get to see 64-bit Mac portables shipping sometime before our grandkids go on Medicare. And that, we feel, totally justifies a few flecks of mouth foam here and there.

We're sure you must be in a state of iMac G5 Overload by now, given that every sentient being on this plane of existence is weighing in with an opinion, so how about we switch gears for a while? Let's see, here, in terms of other plot choices, we've got... irretrievable data loss and Hewlett-Packard turning iPods into bling-bling. And since you're probably pretty hPodded out, too, why don't we stick with the data loss? That's always good for a laugh or two. (Besides, what can we possibly say about P. Diddy's diamond-encrusted iPod that would make the situation seem any more ludicrous than "P. Diddy has a diamond-encrusted iPod"?)

So, data loss it is: MacMinute reports that Apple has pulled the Virex 7.5 updater that was posted as a free update for .Mac users recently, citing "customer feedback and technical issues currently under investigation." The posted version of Virex has reverted to 7.2.1, and Apple has even gone so far as to provide a special script to uninstall 7.5 if you've already loaded it up. For some reason that gives us roughly the same sort of feeling as a flight attendant walking into the cabin at 30,000 feet and saying "just a little turbulence, folks, nothing at all to worry about-- and on a completely unrelated topic, just out of curiosity, does anyone here have any piloting experience?"

So just what are these "technical issues," you ask? Apple's not saying, but faithful viewer Mike Yenco updated to version 7.5 before it had been pulled-- and once he did, Virex deleted everything in his Mail inbox. We have reason to believe that Mike's situation isn't exactly unique, either, which would certainly explain Apple's "suggestion" that anyone who managed to upgrade before the file was pulled immediately downgrade before someone puts an eye out. (Gee, just imagine what sort of "customer feedback" Apple received from .Mac members who, for their 99 clams a year, had their inboxes scrambled like an egg white omelette?)

We here at the AtAT compound actually dodged a bullet on this one, folks, because we downloaded the update last week and even started to install it, but then canceled the installation when informed that a restart would be necessary. (No way are we resetting our uptime just to update virus software we don't need to run anyway.) In fact, we still have the updater in our Downloads folder, and you can be sure we'll be shredding that sucker into its component bits before it causes anyone any grief. Considering that our AtAT inbox contains 7,946 messages (3,424 of them unread), you can bet that our own "customer feedback" to Apple would have involved a baseball bat with a nail sticking out of it.