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...