Whither the lowly iMac? When Uncle Steve first took the wraps off his Bondi Blue baby back in '98, we never thought we'd be describing its linear descendents as "lowly," but in a way, it's an apt description; funky patterns and CD-burning capabilities aside, today's iMac isn't the earthshattering sales phenomenon it once was. Remember when the iMac was so paradigm-breaking, pundits got into bar fights with broken bottles over whether the system would save or sink Apple? Remember when "to floppy or not to floppy" was a raging philosophical debate? Remember when the iMac was consistently listed among the top five best-selling personal computers at retail? These days the iMac is certainly no slouch, but it's largely the same little guy it was three years ago-- and consumers just aren't that jazzed anymore.

So what Apple-watchers have been waiting for is not the iMac's next evolution, but a revolution: something that'll generate the same kind of buzz and interest that Apple created when it threw a translucent blue space egg into a world full of beige boxes. There has to be something about the next iMac so completely different from what people expect in a home computer that it once again breaks from the rest of the herd-- and AppleInsider happens to think that the next iMac will boast not one, but two differentiating factors. The first is obvious: Mac OS X, which will make what's on the iMac's screen stand out more than ever before. The second, though, is the thing that'll get passersby doing double-takes to stare at the new iMac in the first place: the screen itself.

Yes, while there are the usual caveats about the rumor being "unconfirmed by sources who can be considered reliable" (and let's not forget that mere hours before the last iMac was unveiled, AppleInsider reported that it would ship with a CD-RW/DVD combo drive-- whoops), one of the next iMac's "highly rumored features" is a widescreen display, à la the PowerBook G4. Now, see, that would turn heads. It doesn't much matter whether the new iMac boasts an integrated 15.2-inch 1152x768 LCD identical to the PowerBook's, or some crazy custom super-wide CRT (like the one pictured in the "iMac 2" mockup at the end of a Terminal 34 article kindly forwarded to us by faithful viewer Michael)-- in either case, a widescreen display would get people's attention.

While we don't want anyone to get too excited over unsubstantiated reports, we don't mind telling you that the mental image of new widescreen iMacs running Mac OS X, iMovie, and iTunes pulling window-shoppers into a chain of Apple-owned and -operated retail stores "to get a closer look" has us grinning like idiots. Not that we've ever particularly feared for Apple's future in the first place, but the very thought of new iMacs running Mac OS X and a line of retail stores that will actually demonstrate and sell them competently has us very happy to own Apple stock. Buckle up tight, kids, because we have a feeling that come July, this drama's going to move mighty fast...