14 DAY TRIAL // Although there has been much rumor and speculation, and everybody expects to see the new Intel based Mac mini unveiled at MacWorld in January. There are people who believe that a full, Intel based Mac lineup is far from here.
"Right now a $999 list price iBook sells in volume for something closer to $699 and earns a small but positive margin for Apple. The PowerPC G4 in that machine has a typical volume price of around $72, or about 10% of the selling price for the machine. In comparison people like Asus, Quanta and Hon Hai Precision (who make Dell, HP, and IBM gear) pay Intel on the order of $240 per unit for the two year old, 32bit, 1.8Ghz Pentium M predecessor to the 'Yonah' line," Paul Murphy writes for ZDNet.
If this is the case, Apple has the option of either raising overall price for the new Intel Macs, which would not go well with the public, or lowering the quality of the other components in order to keep the price as low as possible, which would probably also include giving up on any hardware failsafes that would ensure OS X only runs on 'adequate' hardware.
Neither of these two options are very likely seeing as how Apple has made it very clear that they will ensure OS X runs on Apple Hardware, and the new iMac is no more expensive than the old one was but has lots of extra features.
It seems that Apple is continuing its secretive approach and no one can say for sure what is going to happen until Steve Jobs calls a conference.