Uh-oh-- Macworld Expo's less than a month away, and you know what that means: rumors galore! This is the most enjoyable time of the year for avid Apple watchers; forget about that Christmas and New Year's nonsense, because the real festivities involve watching the rumors sites work up a sweat trying to keep up with the deluge of speculation swirling around the 'net. And while the rest of your friends think they have it tough trying to decide what kind of fruitcake to send to Aunt Freda or which swanky "millennium" celebration to get plastered at, you're giddily trying to pick which Mac rumors to believe before Steve saunters out on stage and reveals the truth on January 5th. Does it get any better than this?

So if you've been keeping up with it all, you know that we've got a veritable plethora of Repeat Rumors this time around. Or, if not a plethora, it's at least an abundance. Well, okay, it's more like two or three. But these rumors are big, folks-- because they deal with bigness. Apple Insider's revived the rumor of a new iMac with a 17" display. Mac OS Rumors trots out the old saw about a "professional" keyboard and mouse for the Power Macs, which still ship with the iMac's mini-keyboard and hockey puck. The skeptics among you may scoff at these rumors, and who could blame you? You've heard them over and over again for well over a year, and nothing's come to pass. (AppleLinks, for one, is sick of Lucy pulling away the football.) But it's the holidays, so the more trusting among you can be forgiven if you find yourself dreaming not of dancing sugarplums, but of chunkier iMacs and full-size keyboards.

As for your friendly neighborhood AtAT staff, there's no way we'd ever dismiss any rumor out of hand; heck, we're far too wide-eyed with wonder for that. We wouldn't be surprised if Apple "super-sizes" its input devices for the Power Macs, since criticism of the iMac's keyboard and mouse is nearly unanimous in scope. As for a bigger, beefier iMac, hey, why not? The new iMacs aren't faring nearly as well as we (and, presumably, Apple) had hoped, so making it bigger and bulkier is a natural move. Bigger is better; it's a fundamental rule of the American consumer process. That's why the Newton completely kicked the Palm's butt in the handheld marketpla-- er, never mind. But the main reason we're a little doubtful about the 17" iMac is this: if such a machine existed, and it included FireWire for high-speed peripheral expansion, professionals like us (hey, stop sniggering!) would have almost no reason to buy a Power Mac instead. But we can certainly keep our fingers crossed. Meanwhile, a jolly old elf named Steve may well be chuckling merrily at all the disinformation he's managed to spread...