And why not have an all-iMac G5 episode today? After all, that cuddly lil' pup is probably the most dramatic thing to happen to the Mac platform since the Power Mac G5 first touched down over a year ago. And it's really real, too; by all accounts they're showing up in Apple retail stores all across the country, including our own local Cambridgeside location, and according to the buzz (and the Boston Herald), Apple's latest iMac is one seriously big draw, pulling in potential customers by the big, omnipotent fistful.

So where's the drama, you ask? Good point; without conflict, there isn't any. But fortunately we've got a classic man-against-machine sorta deal brewing, here. See, not all buzz is good buzz, especially if it's coming from your so-called "whisper-quiet" new iMac; faithful viewer Stewart notes a discussion thread in the MacNN forums in which one new iMac owner notes that "the fan is extremely loud and annoying" and "sounds like someone is flying an RC plane around outside." That description seems rather at odds with Apple's assertion that the iMac G5 "measures less than 25 dB when idle," and is therefore "quieter than a whisper" (which measures 30).

Now, before you write off this noise report as the rantings of one guy whose ears must be the size of pie plates, you should be aware that it isn't exactly an isolated incident. Apple's own support forums contains several threads related to the matter, including "iMac G5 Fan Noise Issues" and "How to get rid of imac G5 noise," in which one fix apparently seems to be to set Processor Settings to "Reduced," thus throttling back the G5 to run at a slower speed and cooling it down so the fans don't need to spin so fast. Great. So you can own one of those super-fast new G5 chips, you just can't use it too much-- at least, not if you want to keep your eardrums from perforating.

The good news (if you can call it that) is that several iMac owners report that their systems are impressively silent, so at least it's not a case of poor design coupled with an overzealous marketing department. (As if. Steve hates fan noise, remember? There's no way he'd approve an iMac model that sounded like a beehive that'd been used as a football, Wind Tunnel Power Macs notwithstanding.) The bad news, of course, is that this means there's a substantial number of iMac G5s out there that are apparently somehow defective. Dunt dun dun dunnnnnnnnt!

So will this apparent fan-noise flaw be prevalent enough to cast a pall over the whole iMac product line, like when some of those Power Mac G4 Cubes showed up with "cracks" in their enclosures? How many early units will be returned because they sound like a band saw cutting galvanized tin? How much cash will Apple have to chew to repair noisy units that aren't returned? Will Apple release a firmware update to alleviate the problem, or will it jump straight to a power supply exchange program from the Mirrored Drive Door era? Ooooooh, tension!