So why are we so late this time? Well, it's a long story, but it all stems from the fact that our last episode didn't catch up on everything we'd missed during our convalescence. In particular, faithful viewer Chris H. tipped us off to a rant posted last week at Designtechnica by none other than analyst Rob "I Have a Sock Stuffed With Cheetos Where My Brain Should Be" Enderle. Given our delicate state what with the mucus and all, though, we were prepared to let it pass without comment, since it's just three pages of his usual "Apple is going down the toilet and here are nine provably false and/or completely incomprehensible arguments why" shtick, which we've all seen a bazillion times before-- but then we noticed the glint of something dreadfully, dreadfully important buried in the Enderlean muck: a claim that the iMac G5 is outright unsafe for use.

That's right, kiddies; in addition to being paid for spitting quotable sound bites at CNET reporters, safety-conscious Rob is apparently also a mechanical engineer with a profound understanding of torque, rotational inertia, and all that great stuff you slept through in physics class. And his professional analysis of the iMac G5's industrial design is that it's "far less stable" than the iMac G4's screen-on-a-bendy-arm approach: says he, the G5 "places the weight too high and relies on a base that is too narrow making it likely that it would fall."

So why haven't we been flooded with reports of iMacs falling over all across the country, you ask? Simple-- there just haven't been enough earthquakes since the model first shipped. Yes, Rob's contention is that the latest iMac may seem harmless and stable in normal circumstances, but as soon as the marvel of plate tectonics makes the room start gettin' jiggy wit' it, the iMac G5 will flop over like a drunken haddock with an inner ear infection. Worse yet, he apparently also thinks that when the iMac takes a header, its LCD screen will shatter and slaughter your loved ones: "Falling glass can be a huge hazard in a home late at night when you are trying to get the kids and family to safety during an earthquake."

Holy cats! We've actually witnessed LCDs being damaged before (the most memorable being a Gateway laptop that was set down on a curb and then backed over by a bus), but we've never seen one actually spray life-threatening shards of glass when it cracked. Since Enderle's warning foretells tens of thousands of serious injuries and deaths among iMac G5 owners living anywhere remotely near a fault line whenever the next tremor hits, we immediately took it upon ourselves to test his theory for the sake of our viewers' safety.

To that end, we "appropriated" (cough) an iMac G5 for testing purposes and set it up in our lab. Then we simulated a 5.3-magnitude seismic event by standing in front of it, joining hands, and jumping up and down like Steve Ballmer on designer crack. We had barely started screaming "GIVE IT UP FOR MEEEEE!!! WOOOOOOO!!!!" (for verisimilitude, you understand) when the iMac tipped right over, shattered on impact with the tabletop, and launched eight-inch shards of thick broken glass straight at our faces, piercing our eyeballs and lodging deep in our grey matter.

Which is, of course, why we're so late; it took time to rise from the dead, pick the glass out of our brains through our traumatized orbital sockets, grow new eyeballs, etc. (The things we do in the name of science.) But we're here now to tell all of you who own iMac G5s that you may meet the same sorry fate as soon as a heavy truck drives past your house. Please take suitable precautions, such as setting the iMac's base in forty pounds of cement, surrounding the whole unit with a bulletproof cage, installing gravity-negaters in the room where the iMac resides, and planning new earthquake evacuation routes that keep you at least fifty feet away from the iMac at all times. Many thanks to Rob Enderle for pointing out that the iMac G5 is such a deathtrap when an earthquake hits; if he hadn't mentioned it, how would we ever have guessed?

Incidentally, just to return the favor, we'd like to issue a little warning to Rob himself. Remember when his wife Mary trashed the iMac G5 in a MacNewsWorld piece last September? She also mentioned that "the base seems too narrow for safe use" and that "knocking over a PC could be catastrophic"; clearly their love is set in a strong foundation of shared mechanical engineering expertise and concern for personal safety-- or is it? Because in that very article, Mary also happened to mention that she and Rob "have very modern taste in furniture with lots of glass, stainless steel and leather."

Glass furniture? In California? Rob, Rob, Rob... granted, a glass coffee table probably won't crash to the floor and propel jagged shards six inches into your brainpan at the slightest tremor the way an iMac G5 certainly will, but still-- should you really be endangering yourself and your family that way? We strongly recommend that you immediately replace all of your furniture with furry bean bag chairs and a novelty inflatable couch. After all, why risk puncturing that Cheeto-filled sock in your skull?