Blue and white G3s and fruit-flavored iMacs in January. Thinner, lighter PowerBooks in May. The iBook in July. There's no question: when Steve Jobs makes a public appearance these days, he's always got some cool new product ready to show off. And that bodes really well for the Mac faithful looking to spend more money on fun new toys, since His Royal Steveness is scheduled to take the stage again at the next Seybold gathering in San Francisco at the end of this month. What's particularly interesting, though, are the conflicting "insider reports" about what exactly Steve plans to unveil...

See, several sources with contacts behind the Silicon Curtain are whispering to us that the Next Big Thing™ slated for introduction at Seybold is none other than the next generation of the professional Macintosh, the Power Mac G4. What will most definitely not be announced, these sources claim, is the new iMac, code-named "Kihei." And that makes a certain amount of sense, given that Seybold is very much a professional's conference-- the introduction of a consumer device just wouldn't make sense. In fact, we're hearing that Kihei-- with its new enclosure, larger screen, AV options, and possibly even removable media bays-- won't surface anytime this quarter, making October a more likely target date.

But MacCentral's sources are taking almost the opposite view. They're claiming that a new iMac is "likely," while a G4-based product is a "slim possibility," and they cite a very good reason: Motorola hasn't even announced the G4's arrival, let alone any kind of market availability for the new chips. Still, there are a few things to consider. First, just because a product gets introduced doesn't mean it'll be ready to ship; Steve could well wow the Seybold crowd with a pre-production G4 and announce availability at the end of the year. In the meantime, we suppose Apple could ship Sawtooth-based Power Macs with faster G3s, but that might detract from the overall "oomph" of the G4 as a product. Anyway, while we don't necessarily believe that a new iMac won't surface until October, we just can't see Apple introducing it at Seybold. Unless, of course, the rumored addition of FireWire will prompt Apple to demonstrate how the new consumer iMac is powerful enough to use for professional video editing. Hmmm...