What with all the uncertainty over the look of next week's new Power Macs, it sure is nice to know that at least we're going to get LCD-based iMacs, right? Sigh... Well, we hate to burst your bubble, folks, but apparently it just wasn't meant to happen. You may recall that this past Monday we received word from a talking pile of fake internal organs (don't ask) that next week's new iMacs "aren't much different from what's out there now." At the time we hoped to ignore that frightening possibility, but as of today, we find ourselves compelled to take it as gospel.

As faithful viewer Jerm pointed out, MacMinute is now reporting that "next week's Macworld Expo... will not see the debut of a flat-panel iMac." And if you choose not to believe MacMinute's sources, we should add that we broke out every intentional and unintentional method of reliable prognostication we've yet experienced (little birds, Alpha-Bits, foreboding dreams, etc.) and all of them-- every single one of them-- agrees with MacMinute, and with the talking entrails that visited us on Monday. In other words, our hopes of a flat-panel G4-based iMac have been dashed against the rocks of despair, at least for now. Honestly, we were praying that Julio Ojeda-Zapata was right to expect such a system next week, but right now it doesn't look good. (By the way, apologies to Julio-- when we first addressed his lament that there's no $800 iMac (which got him flamed to a crisp), we didn't realize he had been given a spending limit by his editors. Our bad.)

That said, we're still expecting a new iMac, but it's not going to blow anyone's socks off. By pulling random letters out of a Scrabble bag, running the results backwards through a Captain Midnight secret decoder badge, and translating from Esperanto into English, we think we've pieced together that next week's consumer desktop will simply be the same old CRT-based model with faster G3 processors (what are they at now, 600 MHz at the high end? Let's say 700 or 750 MHz, then), DVD/CD-RW combo drives available in some configurations, and new colors. Given the rest of Apple's recent product line, we're with the Scrabble bag when it predicts white and titanium-- and maybe something else for people who want a splash of actual color. (Forget about Flower Power and Blue Dalmatian, though.)

Man, what a bummer. We suppose it's possible that Steve has somehow found a way to confound the mystical forces of nature that generate these predictions, but as of now, we're expecting to be spectacularly underwhelmed when those new iMacs hit the floor. At least we can still look forward to new Power Macs starting at 733 MHz, right? The Scrabble tiles are a little unsure about the top speeds, however; they seem to think that 866 MHz will be available immediately, with 1 GHz showing up in a month or two, but our Magic 8-Ball indicates that even if the 1 GHz boxes aren't ready to ship, Apple will happily take preorders-- meaning they will at least make it into the product line-up. Still, all we can say is, with letdowns like the iMac will probably turn out to be, Steve's "one more thing" better be a killer. Apple handheld, anyone?