When you play the Apple prediction game, you have to decide just how far out on the limb you're willing to climb. Those who play it safe and stay lashed to the tree's trunk are content with sticking to the obvious and the general, stating, for example, that "the iMac will be revised at some point in the future." Well, duh-- that's right up there in difficulty with predicting that "within a week these bananas will go bad." Way to go, Criswell. A broad foretelling of future happenings based solely on repeated past events may technically qualify as a prediction, but it's about as exciting as listening to paint peel.

Those who are willing to crawl out a bit further might tackle the issue of when this inevitable iMac revision is going to surface. This is only tricky because Apple has a tendency to buck the conventional wisdom and either introduce new products a bit earlier than most people expect (e.g. the Power Mac G4) or, in most cases, much later (e.g. Pismo, Lombard, Wall Street, iBook, the legendary and still vaporous Apple-Palm, etc.). However, even picking a release date for the new iMac is a pretty safe bet these days-- it's long overdue already, and all indications show that Apple's trying to clear the channel of the current iMacs ASAP. Add in the fact that Apple likes to introduce new products at large media gatherings and consider that the biggest East Coast consumer-oriented Mac convention is happening next month, and voilà: you've got a date of mid-to-late July, 2000. We wouldn't bet our first-born on it if we were you, but all things considered, there are far worse things to put your money on.

Those who will go way out on that limb will actually try their hand at predicting just what the new iMac will be. AppleInsider is one site that's always willing to give it a shot, bolstered by illicit data smuggled out through Cupertino's Silicon Curtain; its sources not only "confirm" such predictable advances as larger hard disks ("up to and beyond 20 GB") and more RAM, but also continue to claim that the new iMac DV Special Edition will have a 400 MHz G4 processor thumping at its core-- though the standard iMac and iMac DV will merely get a G3 speed boost to 450 MHz. We were a bit surprised to read that these new iMacs reportedly have a new motherboard under the hood, adding support for mysterious and unspecified "new technologies that will debut" on the revised systems. Anyone want to venture a guess as to what these "new technologies" might be? We hardly think the rumored new full-size keyboard would necessitate something as drastic as severe changes to the motherboard design-- though it sure would explain why Apple's been shipping the teeny models for the past two years.

Any further mention of the earlier "17-inch screen" prediction is conspicuously absent, so you may want to adjust your bets accordingly. But the buzz about the "iBox" architecture (which allegedly will allow customers to choose what kind of display-- 15-inch CRT, 17-inch CRT, or 15-inch LCD-- they want on their iMacs) has shaken loose a few interesting rumors here at AtAT. Several viewers wrote in claiming that when the iBox iMacs ship (whether next month or further down the line), the 15-inch flat-panel LCD option will be the standard. Bestill our wildly palpitating hearts! Could it be true? Will the iMac owner of the future compute merrily away without an electron gun pumping away at his or her frontal lobe? Now that's a prediction that's way out on the edge.