Who says rumors never come true? Wrong people, that's who-- because praise Jobs and hallelujah, the optimists finally get their day (and they always knew it would happen sooner or later): as pointed out by faithful viewer Ahab, Apple proved the last-minute rumors true with a press release introducing the brand spankin' new 20-inch iMac, available right this very second at the online Apple Store, Apple's retail stores, and (if there are any left) maybe even at one or two Apple Authorized Resellers.

Now, we're going to go out on a limb and assume that most of the pessimism surrounding the 20-inch iMac rumors stemmed from a fundamental skepticism that Apple would ever have grafted such a large and high-quality display onto the company's consumer desktop system-- which we can totally understand, since the new iMac's 1680x1050 screen is apparently just a 20-inch Apple Cinema Display-on-a-Stick™. (Frankly, you can color us mildly annoyed that Apple's latest "Mac for regular folks" has a built-in LCD with a higher resolution than our original 22-inch Cinema Display, which was Apple's top-of-the-line professional display less than two years ago. Progress bites.)

When you think about it, though, the idea really isn't all that wacky. For one thing, the iMac isn't Apple's "cheap" Mac anymore, either; that distinction belongs to the eMac these days. And while it's easy to forget, scary as it may sound, the 20-inch Cinema Display is actually Apple's mid-range LCD these days, and it only costs $1,299-- so from a features-for-price standpoint, a $2,199 20-inch iMac is actually a pretty obvious addition to the product line.

Of course, price and features are one thing (well, okay, two things), but Newtonian physics is something else altogether. We were a little surprised to hear about a 20-inch iMac because that's a pretty mammoth screen to be supported by that "ultra-compact base"-- especially on a positionable articulated arm that allows the screen to be swiveled all over creation. Seriously, just look at the line-up; the original 15-inch model looks a little light on top, the 17-inch seems well-proportioned and all grown up, and the 20-incher looks so top-heavy that if you were to tilt the screen more than a couple of degrees from its locked and upright position it'd go pitching over sideways due to "balance issues."

We're sure that isn't actually the case, of course; rest assured that Apple found a way to stabilize the base while also preserving the new 20-inch screen's total range of positionable freedom. (Even with the rash of quality control hiccups in recent years, we're not yet ready to believe that Apple's QC staff could be comatose enough to ship iMacs that actually fall over.) We've scribbled a bunch of funny-looking Greek letters and random numbers on a blackboard and pretended to do the math, and as far as we can tell from our fake equations, in order to stabilize the 20-inch iMac's screen, Apple had to increase the weight of the base by approximately 600 pounds. That's a tricky situation, given how relatively small that base is and how much stuff is already crammed in there; Apple needed to find something incredibly dense to boost the weight of the base by 600 pounds without welding it to an unsightly external anvil or something.

Well, we've got an exclusive, folks: AtAT sources have done a little digging and discovered that the ultra-dense material Apple used to weigh down the 20-inch iMac's base is analyst Rob Enderle. Mystery solved. Now run right out and buy one of those suckers-- but bring a forklift to get it home. Or lift from the knees.