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Rumors swirl over Apple's iMac Blu-ray, quad-core plans

The latest rumors surrounding Apple's plans for its upcoming iMac makeover hint that Blu-ray could remain a "bag of hurt" for a bit longer, while the company taps Intel for its latest mobile chips to help fill the void.

More specifically, people close to the Cupertino-based company have picked up on chatter suggesting that earlier plans to offer Blu-ray technology on the new all-in-one desktops may have been pulled back just before the systems went into production last month.

Either way, it's believed that the technology would have found its way into the new models largely in the form of build-to-order options, given steep pricing still associated with Blu-ray drives.

Around the same time, others with connections to the Mac maker have shared word that Intel's recently released Core i7 'Clarksfield' quad-core mobile processors may find their way into the new iMac line in some capacity, making the new models the first consumer-oriented Macs with four processing cores.

The chips are available in 1.6GHz and 1.73GHz flavors, in addition to a pricer 2.0GHz variant that Apple would appear less likely to adopt in a consumer Mac given a price tag north of $1000.

Although AppleInsider has been unable to confirm either of these rumors with 100% certainty, it publishes them for the sake of completeness.