If you're anything at all like us, you realize that there are two reasons to follow Mac-related rumors. The first is to try to gather early and accurate information about upcoming hardware and software, in a serious attempt to plan your personal and/or professional Mac-using roadmap and to gauge Apple's position in the industry and the industry's reaction to Apple's progress. The second is to indulge in rampant speculation about cool new stuff without worrying too much about whether or not what's being discussed will ever come to pass. It's almost a left brain/right brain kind of thing. Personally, most of the time we like our rumors spun heavily to the right-brain side of the bell curve. Could you tell?

And that's why we're so happy that there's a new Mac rumors site that is obviously taking great right-brain joy in dishing the latest Apple-flavored dirt. Again, we have nothing against "serious" rumormongering, as it definitely holds a very important place in the whole Mac experience, but Think Secret is a nice example of how much fun rumors can be. Take, for example, their latest "food for thought" piece on a possible new addition to the Mac lineup this summer: in addition to a newly-revamped iMac and the long-awaited consumer portable (now apparently called the iBook), Apple may be planning an even lower-cost, lower-end new Mac to woo the LC/IIci holdouts that haven't been enticed to replace their systems with an iMac. This "cMac" will be targeted squarely at the more than half of all Mac users that are using Macs that are at least four years old-- all those 68k boxes and Power Macs made before Apple adopted the PCI slot.

Extending the low-cost, low-end spirit of the iMac to new heights (or, rather, new depths), the cMac is rumored to use an iMac motherboard sans Ethernet housed in a "pod-like" translucent case. With a modem, CD-ROM drive, a couple of USB ports, a modest hard drive, and a monitor port to let existing Mac (or, for that matter, PC) users connect their own monitors to the built-in ATI Rage Pro graphics subsystem, the cMac is expected to sell at a $699 price point. It's an intriguing concept, even if it turns out to be completely false; we bet there are even plenty of small businesses out there that would leap at the chance to replace their aging 68k Macs with a cMac for such a low cost (although the lack of Ethernet would be a big problem, we'd imagine). Without a built-in display, there wouldn't be any complaints about being forced to use a 15-inch display; a 4 MB ATI chip will be great for the 17-inch screens on which many businesses have standardized. Plus, the idea of a little translucent blue towerish lump of a Mac appeals to us in a big way. Something new to think about...