Is Apple Ready To Release A New iMac? How New?

I’m ready for a new Mac. My current iMac is aging and I have a couple of relatives drooling over it. I want a MacPro mini tower at an iMac price.

The word on the street is… wait. New Macs are on the way. I’m waiting. What will I get?

Let me stretch a rumor as far as possible. New. iMacs. Soon. What kind of iMac? New design or merely a speed bump?

The iMac’s current design is not quite as old as the PowerBook and MacBook Pro design, but it’s close. GeekSugar claims that Apple will introduce new iMacs next week.

That piece of rumor can’t be all that exciting. Apple introduces new products rather regularly. For example, who among us isn’t expecting Apple to plop a 3G iPhone sometime in June?

You don’t need to steal corporate secrets to figure out some of what Apple might do. Apple stuffed Intel’s faster and newer Penryn chips into MacPro models and MacBook Pro models earlier this year, but not into the iMac.

It’s possible, if not probable, that the current iMac line will get a modest speed bump with new chips. Again, that happens regularly. What would make the news really news is that it’s possible the chip could be a quad core Penryn. The iMac currently has a single Core 2 Duo inside.

GeekSugar claims that next Tuesday is the aforementioned launch date.

There’s usually a big difference between what I want, what Apple makes available for me, and what I can afford.

I want a MacPro, but can’t afford it. I don’t necessarily want another iMac if it’s just more of the same old. See? That’s where a nice MacPro mini tower would come in handy, say with a single quad core chip inside?

If no MacPro mini tower, then what? April and May is a good time to introduce a new flagship product model, to catch the school buying season. The iMac clearly is a flagship model that hasn’t had much of an overall design change in a few years.

Rumors notwithstanding, I’m ready, credit card in hand, for a souped up iMac with scads of RAM and a screaming fast quad core chip. What’s your next Mac? Notebook or desktop? iMac or MacPro? MacBook or MacBook Pro? And how often do you buy a new Mac?