We'll say one thing for this upcoming keynote: we've been following these things since Steve's return four years back, and we can't remember one being shrouded in more mystery or controversy regarding new hardware. There are at least three debates currently raging in the Mac community regarding what Steve's got up his sleeve for this Wednesday, and every time we think an issue is settled, suddenly something happens to cast doubt on the answer all over again. We admit it, we're confused as all get-out-- but heck, we haven't had this much fun since we plugged a pickle into a wall outlet.

First up, there's the iMac. For weeks, rumors had been flying that Apple was slated to release an all-new iMac design, featuring an LCD display to complete Apple's transfer away from the size, weight, and heat problems of the traditional cathode ray tube. But then just a week ago, we started hearing whispers that Apple wasn't going to have its new LCD design ready in time, and thus this week's new iMac will in fact be pretty much more of the same: most recently, we're hearing 500-700 MHz G3s, CD-ROM and CD-RW drives (not even a combo drive option!), maybe a couple of new colors, and the slimmest of chances of a slightly different CRT, with prices ranging from $700-$1499. But check this out: faithful viewer Jason points out that Mac OS Rumors is now claiming that the LCD iMacs are "ready to roll" and we'll see them in less than forty-eight hours. Say what now?

Meanwhile, how about those Power Macs? Some people are insisting that they'll hit 1 GHz this Wednesday, while our own mystical methods of prognostication are hinting that's more of a fall thing; expect no higher than 867 MHz this week, with a dual-800 MHz option and a "low-end" 733 MHz thrown in for good measure. But the real controversy is over what these things will look like, and whether those "spy photos" that hit the 'net last week were legit. (Faithful viewer Peter Baker notes that even Wired has now reprinted one of them.) What can we say? Our gut feeling was that they were real (albeit crappy) photos of a real prototype, and well they may have been-- but MOSR says they're "definitely fakes." So what will the new G4s look like? Um, well, MOSR claims they'll boast a "whole new enclosure," but we're hearing that the case is literally unchanged, minus a slight difference in color. Go figure.

We probably shouldn't even get into the whole "Son of Pismo" 14-inch-screen iBook rumors, because as far as we know, no one but Go2Mac seems to have heard anything about that. Or so we thought; faithful viewer Eric Enderson tells us that MacMinute dug up at least one other individual who believes in the second coming of Pismo: Merrill Lynch analyst Steven Fortuna has told his clients that the 14-inch iBook is indeed likely to appear on Wednesday. So yeah, things are most definitely higgledy-piggledy right now-- and we happen to be loving it. Thanks, Steve, for what we have to assume is a disinformation campaign of impressive and far-reaching proportions to have spawned such confusion. We're still expecting greatness on Wednesday, but at this point we honestly don't know what form that greatness will assume. Woo-hoo!

There's been so much hair-pulling over the whole "LCD vs. CRT iMac" and "GHz or not" issues, one topic that's a dead cert for Wednesday's Stevenote has been almost totally ignored: the Apple retail stores. Of course, in terms of being a hot topic and stirring up controversy, the retail initiative had its day; it's more of a "May 2001" thing, after all, and now that the cat's out of the bag, it's only natural that conspiracy-minded Apple watchers would have moved on. But the fact remains that Steve promised us twenty-five stores open by the end of the year, he revealed the locations of fourteen, and he opened two. Two months later, we've still got... two. That means there's a whole lot more retaily goodness coming our way, and what better time to fill us in on Apple's progress in Gapifying its business than at the Mac-loving consumer mecca known as Macworld Expo?

Faithful viewer Jeff Norberry hooked us up with an eWEEK article that provides a nice recap of what we know so far, and what we can expect in the future. You may recall that Uncle Steve proclaimed that a new Apple store would open "every ten days" starting 8-10 weeks from the original announcement, and oh, looky-- it just so happens that we're coming up on the nine-week mark right now. If that timing strikes you as a fascinating coincidence, you need to get out more. We had always assumed that Steve planned to open the next wave of stores starting at the Expo; indeed, that's one of the things to which we've been looking forward the most. (As denizens of the Beantown area, we're geographically challenged when it comes to shopping in L.A. or Virginia, and as such, we're still virgins as far as visiting an Apple store is concerned.)

Ever since we heard that Apple was preparing a massive store in SoHo, we naturally assumed that Steve would announce its grand opening this week to coincide with the big show. We figured that, some night after the Javits Center closed, we'd be able to mosey on down to the Apple store and finally be able to see what all the fuss is about-- you know, test-drive display Macs that actually work, choose a game from an actual selection of Mac software, and maybe ask a few questions of a staff member who a) will actually know the answers, and b) might conceivably talk to us without having a loaded gun pointed at his or her head. In other words, all that stuff we Mac users never thought we'd see in retail until the Second Coming or whatever.

There's only one problem: according to eWEEK, the next stores are slated to open in "early August"-- and if our six years of study in Date-Reading Arts at Calendar University taught us anything, it's that August comes after July. (Try to keep up, here.) What's more, the SoHo store is reportedly "nowhere near completion," so it looks like our dream of experiencing retail magic is temporarily on hold. Wait a minute, so we have to figure out something else to do at night in Manhattan? Not that we're complaining, though; if eWEEK is correct, we're no more than six weeks away from grand openings at the Apple stores in our neck of the woods-- namely, Cambridge and Peabody, Massachusetts-- so we'll get to see the Promised Land soon enough.

Lastly, a quickie to help brighten your Monday: faithful viewer Alicia W. points out an interview over at CNET with a representative of the company responsible for speeding "the widespread adoption" of the personal computer. We're talking about the company that has been at the "forefront of computing style for decades," always with its finger on the pulse of what the public wants in terms of "aesthetic ideals"-- the company whose products "came in multiple colors when most other competitors stuck to black or beige." Yes, ladies and gentlemen, sit back, grab a cold one, and enjoy a fashion-centric interview with none other than... IBM.

That's right, kiddies, because as we all know, IBM has always produced computers just brimming with style. And for those of you poor self-deluded fools who think the iMac represented some sort of design breakthrough just because it came in different colors, IBM's director of design is here to set you straight on the matter: "IBM actually pioneered in the early 1950s the idea of colored computers. Our mainframes came in multiple colors. Companies could buy different end panels. They could be red, blue, green, yellow."

These days, though, that's so over; IBM has instead "shifted the majority of the product line to black" because it's "powerful" and "sort of mysterious." Well, since Apple has obviously just been riding IBM's coattails all these years in terms of design, you heard it here first: expect all Macs to be black by this time next year. (A return to the NeXT Cube, perhaps?) That's Apple, though; always a step behind the design curve. And yes, much to our chagrin, IBM even beat Apple to that laptop keyboard light we've been waiting for since time began...