It's interesting to read reactions to a story that mainly restates what Tim Cook said several weeks ago about the constraints in iMac availability through the end of the year. This isn't news, but confirmation of what we already knew.
I'm more interested in the speculations about the iMac coming and what might happen next year. Like many, I was expecting a spec upgrade iMac sometime last June or so when the chips were available. That it is six months later is something of a warning to those who predict a further redesigned iMac next June when the Haswell comes out. Not so fast.
If you look at the Haswell as the next big thing, you wouldn't necessarily delay an iMac purchase, but should consider delaying a macbook pro purchase, especially a 13 inch model that has no separate graphics chip. Haswell's big improvements will in fact be in power management and on chip graphics. Reported CPU specs for the same clock speed will only be about 10%. That would be an exciting improvement for a laptop providing longer battery life and more support for the Retinal display. But for an iMac - well, I really like the idea of better energy efficiency for a desktop, but I need to upgrade sooner than six months or even longer and that plus a 10% improvement in performance isn't enough to make me wait any more. And I'll still opt for the best external graphics they offer, which the Haswell graphics won't match.
Like many, I would rather have kept the optical drive, which I will use to speed installation of legacy programs and some ripping (much less frequent than in the past) and don't care at all about perceived thinness - but it does look cool. From reports on presentation day, the new screen looks like a real advance, even though not retinal. And bigger and much sharper than my old 24 inch model as well. The optional fusion drive is also a significant advance in combining large capacity and flash speed at a reasonable cost. Ivy bridge is a bigger improvement in performance in a desktop performance over SandyB processors than Haswell will be over Ivy. All in all, this is a significantly improved iMac. I definitely will be placing my order on Friday.