Heads up, rumor fiends; faithful viewer Rich Wolfert was the first to inform us of the return of that legendary AppleInsider report. You know the one we mean-- the article on the flat-panel iMac which allegedly materialized and then mysteriously vanished last Thursday night like some sort of spooky Scooby Doo "phantom web page." (They would have gotten away with it, too, if it hadn't been for those meddling kids.) However, we suspect that the article is sorta like Brigadoon and it only magically appears for a single day once every hundred years, so we strongly recommend that you check it out ASAP. If you were one of the six people who saw the original AI report when it briefly and anomalously shimmered into being last week, you may want to check to see if anything's changed; judging by the 11/29 date stamp, we're guessing "no."

Anyway, so this time we actually got to read the dirt ourselves, and we have to admit it makes a whole lot more sense than the scenario we'd built up from second-hand eyewitness accounts the first time around. To recap, AI's sources indicate that the flat-panel iMac is due to appear early next year (though not necessarily as early as Macworld Expo) and that it will look pretty much like a 15-inch Apple Studio Display carrying a few extra holiday pounds. The specs are juicy enough to give you visions of iMacs dancing in your heads: a G3 processor "running at speeds approaching 1 GHz," a 32 MB nVIDIA GeForce2 MX graphics subsystem, and "at least" 128 MB of RAM-- because these iMacs are allegedly going to ship with Mac OS X as their default operating system. (If that last detail is true, here's hoping that Apple is serious about that "at least" clause; given current RAM prices, we'd love to see every Mac ship with a minimum of 256 MB, because the new operating system feeds on RAM like Bill Gates feeds on the unblemished souls of innocent children.)

The bit that made us particularly skeptical last week was the idea that Apple might ship a high-end LCD-based iMac complete with a Superdrive for the low, low price of just $1299-- a move that would never, ever happen given current pricing and technological restrictions unless Uncle Steve went off his meds. Now we see that the $1299 price point is for a combo drive model, whereas a DVD-burning iMac would go for $1599. That still sounds low to us, though at least it's within the realm of sanity. Of course, there are other reasons why these specs smell fishy, such as the fact that Apple has always maintained that a G4's "Velocity Engine" is necessary to crunch the numbers in iDVD before the sun goes nova, yet these supposed iMacs are still G3-based.

But hey, entertainment is all about a willing suspension of disbelief, and above all we're glad that AppleInsider is back from wherever it went-- because while we dig Mac OS Rumors and all, variety is the spice of life. If it weren't, no one would have cable... and that's a world far too frightening for us to contemplate. Welcome back, AI, and for the sake of Mac rumor addicts everywhere, the next time you go on hiatus, try to come back sooner than "soon."

Hey, speaking of those flat-panel iMacs, at this stage of the game we think we need to consider upgrading the rumors to the status of Cold, Hard Fact. After all, everybody knows that the further a rumor spreads, the truer it obviously must be; that's the Golden Rule of Rumordom! So, applying that metric, there's no longer any reason to doubt the advent of the new iMacs this January, because for reasons completely beyond our ken, suddenly everyone is talking about these things; what used to be the exclusive domain of a handful of Mac rumors sites is now showing up at such "mainstream" tech media outlets as CNET, WIRED, and Silicon. Heck, we're even pretty sure we heard Regis talking about it while we were flipping channels this morning. (Actually, now that we think of it, that was likely a hallucination brought on by not following our own advice of "never eat anything that's been in the fridge since the Johnson administration"; Regis doesn't usually have six eyes and antlers, does he?)

To be honest, we do know why January LCD iMacs are suddenly "news" and not just "rumor": you can blame it all on Morgan Stanley. Faithful viewer Rooser notes that a couple of Morgan Stanley analysts just issued a report bearing something resembling actual evidence that flat-panel iMacs are imminent: CNET says the analysts report that Apple "has placed component orders for producing 100,000 15-inch flat-panel iMacs per month, starting in January"-- though, of course, "specific product details are shrouded in secrecy." Personally, we're not sure why Morgan Stanley's "supply contacts" are to be trusted any more than the "sources close to Apple" who feed sites like Mac OS Rumors and The Register. And even if we do believe them, what components are necessarily specific to an LCD iMac? The 15-inch screen? Couldn't Apple just be looking to produce more 15-inch Apple Studio Displays?

Whatever. Whether Morgan Stanley's right or not, following the release of that report, the LCD iMac is now mainstream news; it's not just for breakfast anymore. And Wall Street is paying attention, if AAPL's climb today is any indication. That potentially paints Apple into a nasty corner, because now if the company doesn't produce the goods in January, it faces another "fans weeping as they leave the auditorium"-style letdown like last summer's Stevenote, and no one wants that. Which means that Morgan Stanley may really be onto something, because while Apple has that whole "we don't comment on unannounced products" spiel, it did come right out and admit that there would be no new hardware at the last (scheduled) Apple Expo in Paris, just to keep people from getting their hopes up.

So what are we to conclude by the utter lack of a "no new hardware" press release now that everyone's all primed and ready for a January iMac announcement? After all, we're guessing that expectations are now at least as high as they were back in August. We're going to stop short of claiming that this is proof undeniable that LCD iMacs are a mere month from release, but if you were to draw that conclusion entirely on your own, we doubt anyone would blame you...

Stop the presses! Reholster those credit cards! We know that, for the past several weeks, we've been saying that the iPod makes a perfect gift this holiday season, but it has just come to our attention that we were apparently completely incorrect in that assessment. Far from being the ideal present, it turns out that the iPod is actually one of the very worst gifts you can give someone this year. Forgive us-- we had no idea. The evil people at the Apple store (not to mention just about every single review of the product) informed us otherwise. We feel terrible about this.

See, faithful viewer Mike Lee noticed that some outfit called TechTarget (we've never heard of them, but with a name like that, they clearly have their finger on the pulse of today's technology market!) decided to ask a thousand "computing professionals" what gadgets they considered to be the best gifts this year. Unfortunately, the iPod didn't fare nearly as well as we'd hoped; indeed, it actually made the list of "Top Five Worst" presents. And so, in the absence of any actual information about how this poll was conducted or who these "computing professionals" were (aside from the blurb at the bottom mentioning that TechTarget's audience consists of enterprise IT professionals-- surely the funnest of the fun when it comes to computer workers, and with a heavy concentration of Mac users, we bet, too), we're forced to agree with TechTarget's press release: the iPod is a really crummy gift for enterprise IT professionals, and therefore, by extension, it's obviously also a crummy gift for people who don't think Dell erred drastically in retiring beige in favor of that far more distracting grey.

Yes, despite the fact that for all we know every single one of those 1,000 enterprise IT professionals might work at Compaq where iPod use might be a firing offense, being naturally trusting folks, we're taking these results as gospel. Of course, we feel terrible about having misinformed you all. Tell you what we're going to do; if any of you out there already rushed right out and bought your loved ones iPods to stow under the tree/next to the menorah/near the nondenominational holiday shrub, first of all, this is what you get for not waiting until the last minute. Shame on you and your promptness. But secondly, since it's partially our fault that you bought such crappy gifts, we'll bite the bullet and buy those iPods from you for, say, $200 apiece. (Depreciation.) Heck, it's the least we can do under the circumstances.