...after shelling out for Christmas...? I suppose Apple is holding back on what I suspect may be a complete lineup revamp (based on the new monitor connector switch) perhaps in order to smooth out sales through a recessionary winter, however it may undermine goodwill with Christmas buyers when their shiny new iMacs induce a holiday hangover

Dude, they do this close to every single year. New consumer machines at MW January.

Besides, for most consumer tasks quad core doesn't give you much more than dual core.

Seems odd that Apple would release a new Core 2-based product now that Core i7 is out in the wild.

Besides, for most consumer tasks quad core doesn't give you much more than dual core.

Then why are they sticking them in to a consumer box? Oh, right, so they can keep those prices high.

New midi tower or mac mini please.

I don't have a mac, and I'm not going to buy one whilst the choice is a good but very expensive tower workstation, S***** all in one systems that don't let me use my existing (superior) monitors and a 'laptop in a box' that doesn't support multimonitor and has a c*** graphics chipset.

A new midi tower would fix that; alternatively upgrade the sodding Mac Mini, please!

"Then why are they sticking them in to a consumer box?"

To run the latest WoW update, lag galore. :/

"Besides, for most consumer tasks quad core doesn't give you much more than dual core."

Not particularly true for two reasons -

1) most Apple users make more use of multimedia creation tools than PC users

2) Snow Leopard will be highly multicore optimized, providing more benefit to more tasks than before - presumably as long as the software is Cocoa and doesn't bypass the OS... which excludes developers like, say, Adobe. Sorry, I can't resist giving Adobe yet another jab for still being so entrenched in Carbon ;)

There will be no midi tower from apple. Get over it.

paying Apple's prices should go to Dell or Acer to buy computers. If there's no apparent advantage to pay what Apple is asking then why even concern oneself with the how much they charge. No point in going into a Lamborghini dealership to ask why they don't lower the price of a Murcielago so you can afford it. They'd probably just laugh and call security.

I feel that if Apple wants to stick a quad-core chip into an iMac and it costs more, then more power to Apple as long as there's plenty of people that can afford to buy them. I do expect them to have high quality worksmanship along with the power. I think Apple will have a leg up on the other brands. I'm not against Asus, Dell or Acer since they cater to those that like those products and people should have a choice.

As a long-term Apple investor, I want Apple's margins to stay high and if it's at the expense of ignoring the poverty-class buyer, so be it. I'd rather Apple slow market share growth to Microsoft if the product quality has to be compromised.

Won't a quad-core chip be useful in running several apps at a time or running Parallels or VMWare virtual machines? I like running those VM apps and I definitely want quad-cores if it will enhance their use.

There will be the quad at 2GHz with a TDP of 45 watts which is nearly the same as the dual 3.06 current top of the iMac line. Unless Apple reengineers the cooling on the iMac chassis, it's more likely they will offer this option. Then again they may leave the iMac dual core until 3Q 2009 when the mobile quads from the new Nehalem Core i7 series are available. By then Snow Leapard should be out or at least closer (I hear rumors of a delay to Q1 2010)