I personally think Apple at least had plans of releasing new iMacs this year. All the rumors from digitimes, KGI, and others has to have come from somewhere. But in Digitimes latest rumor they wrote that apple had posponed the production because of some issues and new dates are not yet set. This could be true. I just feel that now we´ve speculated of new iMacs the entire year and we are now in the final probable month of 2012. I surely hope something will happen soon, but I wouldn´t be surprised if we won´t see anything
It just seems unreal now to see a "new" tag on the iMac on the apple website, since we haven´t seen it for such a long time and this waiting seems to take forever. On the other hand though, my tiny schred of hope lies in the fact that so many apple stores have run dry and the date for a new iMac seem to get pushed forward (which could indicate they are not getting new supplies).
About desktops staying for a long time or not. I think they have a place in the market for quite some time yet, as you say DirtyHarry. I think the day the desktop is dead is the moment people really don´t have any use for them any more - and then it won´t relaly matter to anyone either. If you see
how extreme the performance of the iphone has increased over the year you can clearly see whats going on. Some day not so far away, phones can perform enough most peoples needs. I mean, even I wouldn´t mind a non-desktop society if my phone could do all the heavy lifting and everything went wireless from my phone to my screen. If I could have a screen and keyboard wirelessly hooked to my phone and could play games, work with heavy photoshop files and render complex 3d scenes straight off my phone, why would I need a desktop....? but we are not quite there yet