You people are relentless! We get a lot of viewer mail here at the AtAT studios, covering a wide range of topics-- everything from "your show has changed my life, so I've taken a vow of silence to show my support and I've sent you all of my worldly possessions" (by the way, to "Speechless in Des Moines"-- thanks for the stereo!) to "I can't believe you're wasting your young, vibrant lives cranking out this pointless drivel" to "make three million dollars your first year licking stamps in the comfort of your own home." And yet, by far the most viewer mail we get seems to be along the lines of "I'm planning to buy an iMac, but I hear there's a better version just around the corner. What's up with that?" (Actually, okay, we admit it-- we get more mail of the "licking stamps" variety. Hey, who doesn't?)

Well, here at AtAT Studios and Personal Computer Purchase Consultants, when it comes to insider iMac news, we're going to have to borrow a page from Apple's big heavy book and issue a blanket statement of "no comment." However, entirely unlike Apple, we're perfectly willing to comment on the aforementioned "no comment." Basically, it comes down to this: we just don't know. And beyond that, we're going to hazard a wild guess and say that very, very few people outside of Apple's walls know, either. Sure, some of those insiders talk, at the risk of getting a pink slip shoved through the backs of their skulls by an irate and ninja-trained Steve Jobs, but it's entirely possible that most of that insider info comes from insiders who are misinformed, deliberately fed false rumors to catch leaks, or just plain not insiders at all. Them's the risks of trading in the rumors biz.

That said, we can tell you that rumors sites like Apple Insider, who generally have a pretty good track record as far as this stuff goes, are still expecting a 300 MHz iMac to surface sometime towards the end of the month, possibly sporting a revamped flavor palette (with Banana replacing Tangerine and Cherry bumping Strawberry). And on top of that, now the "legitimate" tech press is getting into the act. CNET, for example, is claiming that "industry sources" tell them to expect a speed-bumped iMac running at 333 MHz showing up on store shelves within the next couple of weeks. Your job, should you choose to accept it, is to determine whether the sheer volume of these rumors indicates a certain level of truth, or whether it's just the same rumors being repeated and amplified by several sources. Our personal take on the whole thing? Well, keeping our "no comment" firmly in mind, we'll casually let slip that we wouldn't be at all surprised to see a slightly faster iMac hit the shelves sometime between two and six weeks from now-- after all, Apple revised the iMac twice in five months, and it's been three months since the last upgrade, so we figure they're about due. But we sure wouldn't put any money on it.