Let loose the hounds of fevered speculation! As faithful viewer Paul first noted, CNET is reporting that Apple has scheduled a "press event" on May 1st, and yes, His Steveness will be presiding. You all know what that means: he's gearing up to announce something of vital importance to the future of the Mac community and the welfare of the universe as we know it. Or maybe it's just about new iBooks. It's sort of a tough call.

Certainly in the horse race of Mayday conjecture, the prospect of new iBooks is way out in front. Apple's line of consumer portables is well due for an overhaul, inventory in the channel is bone-dry, and for what little it's worth, AtAT's own shadowy unnamed sources were whispering of May 1st iBooks several days before Apple actually scheduled the event. CNET is projecting a "slimmer version" of the iBook to make it truly portable instead of merely luggable, while little birds circling the AtAT headquarters are warbling questionable spring tunes about a single model, a single hue, and an optional CD-RW/DVD-ROM combo drive. (Why birds in Boston should know anything about secret product strategies in Cupertino, we'll never know; if they turn out to be right, it'll be a mystery for the ages.)

Elsewhere on the product possibilities spectrum, several power-hungry Mac fans are holding out hope for more multiprocessor Power Macs (the logical progression of Apple's 733 MHz G4 surplus and the recent discontinuation of the single-processor 667 MHz model), and Go2Mac is even going so far as to say that new iMacs are on deck for a May 1st unveiling. To us, the former seems pretty likely-- and the latter seems like a long shot, to say the least; it's scarcely been two months since the last batch of new iMacs. Geez, give the poor folks in the lab a chance to catch their breaths.

Other likely announcements for next Tuesday include Apple's retail store plans (hopefully with a list of cities and opening dates so we can start arranging our travel plans), the immediate availability of QuickTime 5 (even though it's already available now), and the revelation that Apple has stationed ground troops twelve miles from Dell headquarters who are ready to invade immediately after the air strikes commence. Of course, we won't know for sure until Steve does his thang, but what's eight days between friends?