Okay, people, it's time to stretch those memories, and stretch 'em hard. Travel with us, if you will, nearly two years in the past, back to that magical era known as "June, 1999." The original iMac had been publicly unveiled over a year earlier, the fruit-flavored iMacs had been shipping for several months, and a shameless young upstart known as Future Power led the charge into what would become a whole new PC-manufacturing cottage industry: counterfeiting the iMac's industrial design. After seeing the blatant iMac clone dubbed the "E-Power" (AppleInsider still has snapshots), Steve's legal eagles filed a lawsuit in record time, and by November, a federal judge had sided with Apple by slapping Future Power with an injunction keeping the E-Power off of store shelves.

Well, since then, not a whole lot has happened in the case, which inched along at the typical snail's pace of U.S. litigation. In December of '99 somebody hacked Future Power's web site to make the E-Power's description a little more, ahem, truthful-- and it took the company several days to notice. Eventually in March of last year, Apple settled similar trade dress lawsuits against iMac copycats Sotec, eMachines, and Daewoo, proclaiming itself victorious in its struggle to prevent others from sullying the iMac's reputation-- but Future Power was quick to remind everyone that its case was still pending, and that it intended to fight. Back in October of 2000, the company even unveiled its new take on the iMac theme: the 17-inch-display AIO, which had most Mac fans laughing and retching simultaneously.

Okay, enough backstory; welcome back to the present, where, as faithful viewer Leland Jory first noted, Future Power has just issued a press release announcing the conclusion of Apple's suit against it. Evidently Steve and company finally decided to settle, and the terms are as follows: Future Power agrees not to sell the original E-Power until at least February of 2004, but the AIO (with its 17-inch screen as a differentiating factor) may be sold freely as soon as Future Power can get it to market. In other words, Apple apparently has no problem with the sale of what is clearly an iMac ripoff, provided that it's a little bit bigger and a whole lot uglier. We imagine that since Apple's moving towards the silvery-white-clear look anyway, the "translucent colors" thing isn't so important anymore; sounds to us like still more evidence that Indigo's headed for the scrap-heap next month. In any case, you can expect to see the AIO strutting its lumpy translucent stuff wherever lamer PCs are sold.

What this also means, of course, is that Apple has effectively stomped the long-standing "17-inch iMac" rumor into a sticky paste; by allowing Future Power to sell its own 17-inch all-in-one translucent monstrosity sans legal hassles, Apple has virtually guaranteed that a similarly hulking iMac was never a part of Steve's plan (or, at least, isn't now). But old rumors die hard; for example, the Apple handheld theorists continue their conjecture, long after Phil Schiller himself publicly declared a year ago that Apple was working on no such thing. So we're willing to bet that the 17-inch iMac will be back in rumor form someday-- even if it's sporting a 17-inch LCD and a release date in 2003.

Speaking of next month's new iMacs, you've probably noticed the way in which we blithely refer to them as if their introduction during the next Stevenote were a sure thing, an utter certainty etched in stone-- despite the fact that there has been absolutely no official announcement from Apple to that effect. How can we take such a risk? The answer is simple: we have zero journalistic integrity.

But that's just as well, seeing as we're not journalists. (Just keep reading that disclaimer down there, Sparky.) If we're wrong about the new iMacs, we'll just shrug our shoulders and launch immediately into an elaborate conspiracy theory explaining Uncle Steve's personal master plan to discredit us by altering Apple's well-laid product rollout plans at the last possible minute. So come July 18th, we'll either get to write about spiffy new iMacs destined to take the world by storm, or we'll craft a portrait of a madman willing to risk derailing the multibillion-dollar company he cofounded purely in the self-serving interests of personal vengeance. Heck, drama's drama, and we'll take whatever comes our way.

That said, even if we were actual journalists (instead of just playing them on TV), we'd still be pretty gosh-darned sure that new iMacs are just over a month away. There have been so many little clues that we'd be fools to ignore them, not the least of which is Apple's recent thematic CRT-bashing and predilection for straight lines and silvery-white; clearly the iMac is due (or overdue) for an overhaul, and we don't mean just replacing Flower Power with Autumn Mist or Happy Lemur or whatever. We're talking about a big change, to go hand in hand with the shift to Mac OS X and the rollout of more retail stores. We're talking about something that'll make the iMac truly different again.

But if you're still not convinced, faithful viewer Nina Tovish has yet another piece of circumstantial evidence to throw on the "gut feeling" pile: according to MacMinute, Apple has just introduced a new promotion which grants iMac buyers either six months of interest-free financing and no down payment, or a free Rio 600 portable MP3 player. This promo in good on any iMac purchase from an authorized dealer from now until-- ready for this?-- July 8th. ("Hey, kids, can you say 'channel-flushing'? I knew you could!")

At broadcast time, this reported deal still hadn't shown up on Apple's promos web site, but there's another iMac promotion listed-- one which offers customers free or cheap color printers to go with their iMacs. And while that promotion has been active since the middle of April, it, too, expires on-- all together now-- July 8th. That just happens to be ten days before the Stevenote on the 18th, which is close enough to make you wonder. In fact, it nearly fits the profile perfectly; remember all those PowerBook and Power Mac promotions that ended on December 31st of 2000? And then Apple introduced new PowerBooks and Power Macs on January 9th-- just nine days later. Gee, where's Sherlock Holmes when you need him?

Attention, all Mac fans who wondered just what Apple meant when it talked about expanding into the "digital appliances" market: forget about $199 web-enabled set-top boxes and ignore the speculation about slate-style "web pads," because The Register has unearthed a project at Brunel University in England which should make the whole subject crystal-clear. A student named Robin Southgate recently completed what we can only describe as a masterpiece of engineering in this age of the Digital Lifestyle: the Java toaster.

Yes, it's a toaster; no, it doesn't brew java-- it runs Java. What it does, predictably enough, is make toast. Ah, but what wondrous toast it makes! When you pop in the bread, the Java toaster dials a toll-free number, downloads the local weather forecast, and then "burns the appropriate symbol on a piece of toast." In other words, if it's sunny out, your toast has a happy little sun (or is that Sun™?) burned into its surface; if it's rainy, you get a cloud and raindrops instead. This is not a joke-- The Reg has photos. With this device, you'll never need to look out your window again, because everything you need to know about the weather (well, except for maybe the pollen count and the relative humidity) is right there under a layer of butter and marmalade. That, friends, is technology's ultimate promise fulfilled.

Yea verily, this is the most exciting implementation of bread as a display device we've yet encountered, and Apple should leap at the chance to license this technology as an important next step in its "digital lifestyle" strategy. We know that the company has just gone ga-ga over LCD flat-panel displays, but a loaf of split-top white is loads cheaper, and if anything, even more environmentally friendly. Sure, the prototype's a little rough, but we're confident that Apple could get the on-bread resolution up to at least 5 dpi, and with a little work, iToast could eventually display not only a crude graphical symbol, but also text and numbers relating the day's projected temperature range, smog index, and the like.

In fact, why limit it to the weather? Someday iToast could even include sports scores, horoscopes, and the daily news headlines, all conveniently and 100% edibly rendered on the customer's breakfast. (Full news stories would likely require that people eat several loaves of toast each morning, however.) And just think of all the money Apple would make on consumables: iBread, yielding optimum resolution and clarity; iJam, which is totally clear so as not to obscure the text; even iWheaties, iJuice, and iCoffee, so that customers could get all their breakfast needs in one convenient shopping session. Internet strategy, schminternet strategy-- this is the big one, people. iBreakfast: The Ultimate Portal.