[Robo]

Originally Posted by screensaver400 Why not an Apple Online Store-only white iMac? Solves the inventory issues, but allows for promotional materials showing two iMacs and two iPads, one of each color.

Apple's retail stores are far more important to the company than in the days of the BTO-only Key Lime iBook. Apple reaches the mass market, more than they ever have before, and if their ads show white iMacs, people are going to go to their nearest Apple Store to see them and will wonder why they're not there.

Originally Posted by pscates2.0 As for the white iMac talk, what would it be? Metal? Plastic? I just can't imagine either one, frankly. They're not going to go back to plastic, I'm guessing. And white metal...what would that look like, I wonder? Matte or glossy finish?

Plastic? White metal? Nonono. They'd keep the metal parts silver, and make the glass parts black or white. Take Apple Cinema Display. Remove Apple logo. There's your chinless black iMac! Change black glass to white. There's your white iMac! (Alternatively: Take white iPad. Make big and put on silver stand. There you go!)

There'd obviously be a bit more to it than that — the edges would come to a point and match the iPod and iPad, &c. But you get the general idea. If there still has to be a chin, I think glass will cover it up — either way, the two-tone face is done for. And I think the back might be flat again. The iPhone 3G and 3G S, the second- and third-generation iPod touch, and the first iPad all moved to curved backs, but the then went back to flat cases with the iPhone 4/iPad 2/iPod touch fourth generation. The iMac still has a curved back. Making it flat could make the new iMac seem much thinner, a la iPad 2.

Originally Posted by pscates I think nice, sleek silver is where it's at on this stuff.

Didn't you draw up a white aluminum iPod nano? I like it, but I think a white glass option on the iPod touch is more likely. The same goes here.

In Apple's design vocabulary, silver and colors = aluminum and black and white = glass (or, in the case of cables, keycaps and antenna windows, plastic). Apple's never used white aluminum, and even their black aluminum is more of a dark grey. (The only black aluminum product Apple currently sells is the iPod classic, which was designed before the current design language took effect. The "black" iPod nano is officially considered graphite.) So I agree, silver is where it's at for the metal parts of the iMac. I'm not saying the whole thing will be white. Just the glass front, a la iPad.

Apple's made white products for a lot longer than they've done the black glass thing. If the iPhone 4 and iPad 2 are any indication, that's only because Apple could never get white glass that looked right, and now they can.