You're lying to yourself then, if only for the glamour over a new cpu architecture. The current iMacs are indeed powerful enough to edit hd video. The only thing the sandybridge update will do is give you an incremental increase in time savings. The next iMac won't do what you want it to do either if you want to add hard drives.
Just be patient with the upgrade though. There is no point to get the current iMac when a new one is just around the corner, and you're about to switch over. Apple is very selective in when it wants to upgrade its lineup. They were extremely quick about jumping on the nehalem xeons with the mac pros, and were extremely quick about jumping on the lynnfield bandwagon for their iMacs when intel first released that too. In fact they were some of the first-- if not the first, to incorporate those technologies into their computers. They're also way ahead of anybody else on the thunderbolt technology too. If they're taking their time with an upgrade they're usually reluctant about it, or are just adhering to their normal upgrade cycles. They make very few computer models comparatively to other companies, (that are also uniquely designed with proprietary hardware of their own) so you won't be seeing them updating their computers most of the time at very first mention of an upgrade.
And no apple is more a software company than hardware company (in my opinion, as I love osx and iOS), but it doesn't mean they don't make a lot of their own stuff, because they do have a lot of proprietary hardware in their devices. You could argue they're moreso a hardware company than any other company, because as I said before, they're not the company to throw stuff together and release quickly like others out there.
