Rumors galore-- that's pretty much the default state of the Mac community as far as Apple's consumer product line goes. And what else could you expect? We've all been kept in the dark about the "P1" consumer portable for what seems to be eons now; the fourth quadrant of Apple's product strategy has been a big question mark for as long as we can remember. (Granted, our memories are even shorter than our attention spans, but still...) What'll the P1 turn out to be when it finally ships? Then, in the desktop arena, the continuing excitement about the iMac's irresistible charm-- as well as the fact that Apple has revised it three times in six months-- makes it an ideal system to serve as fodder for the rumormongers among us. After all, given that there's been a new iMac released every couple of months, what's the next one going to be like?

Let's start with the iMac. Most of the more "reputable" rumormongers seem to agree that Apple's going to release an iMac with an entirely new enclosure sometime late this summer. Before then, though, a "speed-bumped" iMac may crash the party-- at least, we hope that happens, since supply of the original 266 MHz fruit-flavored iMacs (commonly and erroneously referred to as revision C models) is severely constrained, and drying up quickly. Apple Insider attributes the scarce inventory to a short supply of 266 MHz G3 chips, so replacing them with the more widely available 300's seems like a good bet. Anyway, once the "new look" iMacs finally do surface, what they'll look like is anybody's guess. NoBeige has an interesting rumor that "ice" white will be replaced with black, and the fruit flavors will be revamped; Strawberry will be replaced with Cherry (less pink, more red), and the sadly unpopular Tangerine will be replaced with-- wait for it-- Lemon. Color us skeptical, though if any computer company would release a computer called a Lemon, well, we're betting it's Apple.

Rumors about the P1 seem to be cooling down these days, since everyone's probably getting really tired of waiting for it to appear. At no point in the past did anything indicate that the P1 was really ready to unveil, but that didn't prevent us all from hoping against hope for an introduction at MacWorld Expo San Francisco. And then Tokyo. And then Apple's most recent media event, which served as the official unveiling of Mac OS X Server. Currently, the most likely announcement date estimate seems to be "late April or early May," to coincide with WWDC; the units probably won't actually ship until late July at MacWorld Expo New York. We did catch one non-date-related rumor, though, and it's not pretty: O'Grady's PowerPage claims to have overhead a conversation between a couple of bigwigs from the company expected to be manufacturing the P1, in which it was mentioned that the long-awaited consumer portable-- originally expected to cost $1000-1200-- will actually retail for a whopping $1800. Holy Missed Consumer Price Point, Batman! We're not putting too much stock in this one just yet...

Apparently the whole world is watching. Remember yesterday when we mentioned that Barron's ranked Apple fifth on its top-500 list of companies? Barron's isn't the only business news organization who thinks Apple's got the right stuff. Forbes ASAP, the technology arm of the ever-popular Forbes magazine, just released their annual list of the "most dynamic companies" and Apple made its debut appearance. Our scrappy protagonist from Cupertino was the only company to crack the top five list of computer hardware makers who wasn't in the top five a year ago. Forbes ASAP ranked Apple fourth, citing not only the iMac's incredible success story, but also the solid new management under Steve Jobs.

Interestingly, Apple beat out heavy hitter Compaq, who dropped from second place to fifth, despite having had revenues over five times as high as Apple's in 1998. Forbes ASAP docked them three spots because their "inventory problems and missed earnings in March '98 enraged Wall Street." Compaq's drop allowed last year's third- and fourth-place companies to click up a notch; Gateway popped into the number two slot, and Sun took over number three.

And who would be sitting in the Number One throne for the second year running? Why, none other than Apple's white whale, Dell. Suppose that sticks in Steve Jobs' craw? We hope so. Nothing spells "drama" like a personal grudge, right? If Steve's still serious about coming after Dell, he's got his work cut out for him; Dell's revenues last year were about twice Apple's, and their growth seems unstoppable-- but we'd love the pathos of another David and Goliath story.

And then, of course, there's our favorite Goliath vs. Goliath story: Microsoft vs. the U.S. government. "Redmond Justice" is still on hiatus until April 12th, but gears are turning behind the scenes, as the show's producers figure out what's going to happen next when our favorite courtroom drama goes back on the air. Apparently the stars are squabbling with the writers about who's going to come out on top when this whole thing is over. You know what that means: settlement talks. According to a CNET article, it may be dawning on Microsoft that their chances of winning this case outright are just a little on the slim side.

So far, though, no settlement talks have been scheduled, and the common ground between Microsoft and the government isn't very large. (In fact, metaphorically speaking, you could just barely fit a porta-potty on it, but only after introducing several inconvenient structural modifications and violating local zoning laws.) In fact, just about the only thing the two sides have in common is that they're both "open to a settlement"-- provided that settlement meets each side's unspecified-- but probably rather stringent-- requirements. Given the current power imbalance, we doubt the government would accept any settlement offer that Microsoft would be likely to offer.

Purely for entertainment's sake, we'd love to see this trial run through to completion, but the odds are stacked so heavily in the government's favor, we consider it pretty unlikely that Microsoft won't finally cave and accept a settlement that they won't particularly like. After all, they're a highly successful company, who didn't get as far as they have by making stupid decisions. On the other hand, sometimes it seems like Microsoft has been saving up its allotment of stupid moves over the years and is splurging them all on this one trial, so who really knows? Either way, there are only a few weeks left before the trial is scheduled to resume, so the clock's ticking...