Look on the bright side: even if Apple had come to Boston and Steve had done one of his legendary keynote addresses, the odds are pretty good that he wouldn't have had anything new to unveil. That's not to say that he wouldn't have had plenty of solid material; a less developer-focused tour of Tiger, an onstage bake-off between a new dual 2.5 GHz Power Mac G5 and whatever the fastest Wintel thingy might be today, and a demo of AirTunes and AirPort Express would probably have all figured heavily, but the timing is such that anyone hoping for a glimpse of never-before-seen Macs might well have come away disappointed. There probably wouldn't have been, for instance, an introduction of a next-generation iMac.

You already know, of course, that Apple has admitted it screwed up badly when trying to balance its inventory of existing iMacs against the expected production of new models, and as a result the cupboard is bare: Apple has ceased taking orders for iMacs because it won't have any to ship until new models are announced and available in September. Now, why Apple has seen fit to announce an announcement of a new product and not the new product itself is beyond us, but clearly the company feels that, for whatever reason, it needs to wait another couple of months before it can introduce the world to this mysterious new iMac. So the thing wouldn't have joined Steve onstage in Boston this week even if he had bothered to come.

So what, exactly is the delay? Well, according to AppleInsider, it's that perennial G5 favorite, "heat-related issues." Yes, the same general problem that was once rumored to have delayed the latest Power Macs for months 'n' months is now reportedly at the heart of Apple's iMac debacle, which will leave the company with a big, gaping hole through the middle of its product range right at the height of the consumer back-to-school shopping frenzy. See, the new iMac supposedly boasts an all-new enclosure which looks "similar to Apple's newly-announced Cinema displays," and apparently stuffing even a low-end G5 into an enclosure thin enough to house a motherboard "behind the computer's LCD screen" is causing difficulties of the Mosty-Toasty variety. (In other words, if you're holding your breath for a PowerBook G5, make sure your will's up to date.)

AppleInsider's source says that "at one point Apple believed that it had fixed the cooling problems, but were later disappointed," which doesn't exactly fill us with confidence that the new fix won't be "disappointing" too-- say, after the new iMacs ship and subsequently start melting after a month's worth of use-- but then, we've never been ones to buy the first revision of an all-new design anyway, so our paranoia doesn't really signify. The point is, Apple figures it has the problem licked, and production of the new iMac is rumored to start "in the next few weeks" to start gathering inventory for the launch in September... or, most likely, one day earlier, at Apple Expo in Paris.

See, the Parisians, they get a Stevenote with new Macs. It all comes down to luck and timing. And, um, Apple actually wanting to show up.