We've got to hand it to Steve Jobs and his Mighty Iron Fists of Silence; here we are, just a few hours away from his Macworld Expo Tokyo keynote address, and our instruments are registering abnormally high uncertainty readings from the Mac grapevine. Normally by now, last-minute details about Steve's new Macs would be plastered all over the 'net, but instead, all that we've found are what appear to be educated guesses that your average fourth-grader could have pieced together after listening to Apple's last earnings conference call. Evidently the more blatant leaks in the Silicon Curtain have been patched, and all the little worker bees are keeping their traps shut. (Apparently Apple's recent punishment-for-leaks policy change from "immediate grounds for dismissal and potential litigation" to "immediate grounds for dismissal, extended periods of Inquisition-style torture, a savage beatdown by the lawyers, and a slow, lingering death" is paying off.)

The apparent lack of cold, hard facts hasn't stopped AppleInsider from keeping us up to date on the imminent iMac revision, though. The latest skinny is that the low-end iMac will keep its basic CD-ROM drive, the mid-range units will move to an iTunes-friendly CD-RW drive, and the top-of-the-line Special Edition "will sport a DVD/CD-RW hybrid drive." (Note: that's not the same thing as the SuperDrive, which is currently only available in the 733 MHz Power Mac G4. So you'll be able to watch DVDs on your new iMac DV Special Edition, as well as burn your own CDs, but don't expect to be cranking out the Great American Movie using iDVD on an iMac anytime soon.) In addition, all models are expected to feature "much faster PowerPC G3 processors" (now that the G4 has finally upped the megahertz ceiling to 733 MHz), with a slim chance of a G4-based iMac making its debut. Nothing we haven't heard before.

Meanwhile, AppleInsider is conspicuously quiet about the second of Apple's "couple of new or revised hardware offerings"; in fact, that quote is pretty much the only reference we get to any potential non-iMac hardware updates. Mac OS Rumors doesn't offer much more, but at least hints that updated iBooks are a slim possibility-- though that prediction is based entirely on the public interview with Apple's European Education Director we referred to yesterday, instead of any juicy insider info smuggled out of One Infinite Loop. Yes, folks, when it comes to rumors based on honest-to-goodness leaks, the well's a-runnin' dry.

But hey, at least we can all look forward to the element of surprise. And those of you lucky enough to have satellite dishes can even watch Steve strut his stuff live; as faithful viewer Kris Hansen pointed out, Apple has posted the satellite coordinates for the keynote address. Let us know how it all turns out; being dish-disabled, we'll reserve our "oohs" and "aahs" for the press releases after the show.

Meanwhile, what of the iMac's distinctive physical design? While it's nice that the "Translucent Space Egg" look has now entered the collective consciousness as an archetype for the ages, it's simply no longer "gee whiz" enough to hold the attention spans (and, therefore, the wallets) of a world of fashion-fickle consumers. So will these imminent Tokyo iMacs boast a spiffy new look? Well, as his MacEdition colleague CodeBitch was kind enough to inform us, the Naked Mole Rat has once again emerged from hibernation, and you know what that means: it's Mole Rat Day!

You all know how this works, right? If Punxsutawney Mole Rat shakes off his hangover and stays out in the daylight, then tonight's new iMacs will boast a dramatically different chassis that'll have tongues wagging from pole to pole. However, if he sees his shadow, he experiences a bad-trip flashback, pops back into his hole to fortify his shaken nerves with various self-prescribed controlled substances, and it's five more months of iMac industrial design stasis. Drum roll, please...

...And there he goes, scampering back into the darkness, screaming about tiny Phil Schillers crawling all over his latex bondage gear! Sorry, folks, but we guess that means that tonight's iMacs are just more of the same, at least on the surface. Perhaps we'll get lucky anyway and Apple will at least throw us a new color palette. If you were hoping for a whole new look, however, you're going to have to wait five months-- for Macworld Expo New York. Even as the Rat went scurrying for cover from illusory Apple marketing execs, he could be heard babbling minor details about the iMac's next big revamp this summer, which will feature a "significant wedgie" in the industrial design area. Details are agonizingly thin, but according to the Rat, the next-generation iMac is code-named "Kiva" and will be released alongside a whole new set of peripherals.

Assuming this isn't all just more drug-induced hallucinatory wackiness (and that's not necessarily a wise assumption), said peripherals will include "Click, a mouse; Clack, a keyboard; Orbit, a new set of speakers; and a new USB microphone to be named later." Hmmmm... what with the timing and all, we would guess that these new iMacs would be the first ones to ship with Mac OS X pre-loaded; given that operating system's built-in multiple-button mouse support, do you suppose that "Click" will mark Apple's historic departure from the single-button ideal? As for a new keyboard, all we ask is that the power key makes a triumphant return. A set of external speakers might indicate that the Kiva iMacs will abandon some of the simplicity that made the line so famous. And a new USB microphone? Bring on the speculation of Internet telephony software, integrated voice recognition support, and more. But that's the Rat-- always giving us food for thought.

While we appreciate the drama that Apple's legal department kicks our way by filing the occasional lawsuit against an iMac cloner or issuing cease and desist orders to software developers who "borrow" the Aqua look and feel, personally, we always find our courtroom drama more exciting when Apple's playing defense. For instance, who will ever forget the ColorSync Saga? While we're glad that Apple eventually won (and in such a wonderfully entertaining manner), we admit that we miss the billion-dollar Sword of Damocles hanging over Apple's head-- not to mention the comic antics of plaintiff Imatec and its press-release-spouting "CEO" Hanoch Shalit.

Well, pine no more-- those of you who demanded further costly patent infringement litigation against Apple solely for the sake of your own enjoyment, your wish has been granted! As faithful viewer Mr. Vapor kindly disclosed, CNET is reporting that Apple is now the target of a lawsuit by some company called "Elonex IP Holdings," who alleges that our favorite Mac-makers violated Elonex patents in the design of some of its monitors. Elonex claims to have patented certain technologies "for reducing the power consumption of monitors when they're not in use." Basically, whenever your Apple display kicks into power-save mode, the bigwigs up at Elonex start hearing little cash register "ka-ching!" sounds.

This time around, though, Apple's sharing the pain; Elonex's suit actually names twenty-one other defendants, including Compaq and Gateway-- and probably any other company with relatively deep pockets that's shipped an energy-saving monitor in the past few years. And this is interesting: the problem appears to be that the twenty-two monitor-makers were simply using standards set forth by the Video Electronics Standards Association, and while Elonex claims that VESA adopted its patents without permission, VESA itself "has not been named in the suit." Is anyone else picking up on a decidedly Imatec-flavored scent, here?

Well, maybe not; apparently Elonex has sued companies for this exact thing before, and settled the cases to its satisfaction. And several big monitor companies like Samsung and Hitachi have also recently agreed to license Elonex's technology, so this suit appears to have a whole lot more merit than Hanoch Shalit's "hey, wouldn't it be cool if Apple gave me some money?" venture. (Plus, we're going to go out on a limb and hazard a guess that, unlike Imatec, Elonex wasn't busted for the illegal sale of stock.) While the article doesn't mention how much Elonex is trying to get, we bet it's a lot more reasonable than Imatec's $1.1 billion-- which is sort of a shame, because this case just doesn't have the same ooomph as the last one. Oh, well... they can't all be gems.