Oooh, this is getting good: remember last month when we said we'd heard "maddeningly unspecific whispers" that "something huge" was coming in April? And remember a week later when we said we were starting to think that maybe-- just maybe-- that "something huge" would turn out to be an iMac G5? Well, new whispers bubbling through the rumor mill are getting less unspecific by the day, and while solid evidence is as lacking as ever, it's starting to look like maybe we weren't completely crazy after all. (Specifically about this, we mean. As far as anything else is concerned, sure, we're completely crazy. But on this subject, there's a solid 1% chance that we're 1% sane. Maybe.)

Check it out, sports fans: AppleInsider reports that Apple is scrambling to update just about its entire Mac lineup, and that "both the 1GHz eMac and iMac products have just recently been updated to end-of-life (EOL) status." That doesn't necessarily mean much, but generally speaking, a product only gets EOLed if something is waiting in the wings to take its place. Now, we haven't the foggiest idea how this stuff works, but we imagine that sometimes the replacement might even turn out to be the exact same product but with a different graphics card and a lower price tag, so the whole "EOL" thing doesn't exactly scream "iMac G5"-- but this quote sure does: "Meanwhile, the company's iMac product line is rumored to be next in line for adoption of the PowerPC G5 processor." It doesn't get much clearer than that.

Not that claims of the presence of "rumors" are gospel or anything, of course, but there seems to be an increasing amount of this stuff floating around right now. Mac OS Rumors now claims that "iMac G5s are nearly ready to roll and the only things holding back the new Power Macs are supplies of new motherboards and higher-clocked PowerPC 970FX CPUs." MOSR's timeline conflicts badly with our own personal pipe dream of new G5s within the next two or three weeks and iMac G5s in April, but truth be told, it's not much worse: "If the new Power Macs ship on schedule in mid to late April, sources believe that a new iMac family with 1-2 G5 models and 2-3 G4 models will follow 5-8 weeks after that-- definitely no later than Apple's Worldwide Developer Conference at the end of June." We sure hope we don't have to wait that long, but even if we do, hey, we have a feeling we'll survive.

Now, we know what you're thinking... and it's disgusting. Stop it. But we also know what you're thinking about the iMac G5: would Apple dare ship one while the PowerBook is still a G4? Okay, sure, it's a little weird to think that the company's professional laptop would be slower than its consumer desktop, but considering that the markets for the two products are so diametrically opposite, it's not like people who were going to buy a PowerBook are going to opt for an iMac instead. And besides-- who says the PowerBook will still be a G4? AppleInsider also refers to new PowerBooks coming "this spring," though there's no word on whether they'll pack G5s or G4s; but with the 90-nanometer G5s now available, it's not completely impossible that Apple could ship a PowerBook G5 within the next few months. It's unlikely, sure, but not impossible.

So the bottom line is, if the prospect of a G5-powered iMac doesn't rev your engine, remember, there are rumors of all kinds of goodies coming down the pike this spring. And considering that we're just now hitting that there "equinox" thingy, 'tis the season, right?