As we've said before, what those analysts are really waiting for is a slew of new iMacs to hit the shelves and start doing some serious retail damage, consumerally speaking. Everyone who obsessively follows every minuscule development in the world of Apple as if the future of the free world depends upon what Steve Jobs had for breakfast on Tuesday (Hey, doesn't everybody? And we're told it was cantaloupe, incidentally) already knows that the current line of iMacs has been designated "end of life" in most resellers' inventory systems, and that the CD-RW drive is the current winner of the "Likeliest New Feature" award as far as the replacement systems are concerned. Yesterday we noted that Mac OS Rumors had a big, heapin' bowl of dirt on the other potential enhancements to Apple's consumer desktop Mac-- including the possibility of a G4-powered iMac DV Special Edition. Finally, gigaflops for the masses!

Well, hang onto your Velocity Engines, because the iMac G4 rumor has been confirmed! (We mean "confirmed" in the AtAT sense, of course, which means that we saw it mentioned at another rumors site. So don't go all swoony just yet.) As faithful viewer David Triska pointed out, AppleInsider's sources are reporting that, yes indeedy, the iMac will soon be the latest citizen of G4ville. And get this: it won't just be the high-end DV Special Edition boasting a G4 processor. Apparently the entire iMac line will be making the G4 move, with the exception of the entry-level $799 model-- which will also keep its lowly CD-ROM drive while the rest of the line-up goes CD-RW. That makes good sense, since a cheap basic iMac is the best fit for penny-pinching schools looking to fill up a lab or two.

So let's think about this for a moment... if the iMac DV goes G4 and gains a CD-RW drive, that puts an enormous amount of pressure on the Power Mac G4. After all, what does the extra several hundred dollars for the pro model get you? PCI slots, sure, and a higher RAM ceiling-- but you don't even get a monitor. If AppleInsider's version of events comes to pass, we have a feeling that the Power Mac line is going to feel a little bit like the Pismo PowerBooks did once the last iBook revision made the scene; the new iBook's enhanced feature set sent sales of the low-end PowerBook skidding to an abrupt halt, as customers decided that a $900 price differential was just too much to justify the PowerBook's extra features. Hopefully Apple has a plan to keep low-end Power Mac sales chugging along, even in the face of G4-powered iMacs. We'll see how this all pans out-- maybe in just a few weeks.