invisible speakers: Apple senior vice-president Philip Schiller launches the new iMac G5 in Paris

Good morning, and welcome to ?Name That Apple!? Fingers on buzzers? All right, let?s begin. For 100 points: It?s a compact rectangular slab that plays great-sounding music from a built-in hard drive. The front is shiny white acrylic with a screen at the top. The corners and edges of the back panel are gently rounded. Overall, the simplicity and purity of its design give this machine a calm, elegant beauty. Name that Apple!

Bzzzzzt! No, I?m sorry, ?iPod? is not the answer we were looking for. The correct answer is: ?the new iMac G5.? If you couldn?t help noticing a resemblance between the two Apple products, though, you?re forgiven; Jonathan Ive, Apple?s chief designer, made the new iMac look so much like his iPod design that it ou-ght to come with white earbuds. The new desktop computer was clearly designed to send a message to the wo-rld?s four million iPod fans: ?If you think our music player is great, you should check out our computers.?

The most striking aspect of the new iMac, which is trickling into stores this week, is that its guts are completely concealed inside the tilting, 17- or 20-inch flat screen. Only a thin anodised aluminum foot touches your desk, making it appear that you somehow neglected to buy the CPU itself (on most computers, that?s the big plastic box containing disk drives and connectors). But it?s all there, hidden behind the two-inch-deep screen.

The large, empty white plastic expanse beneath the screen looks a little weird; no margin at all would have looked much more satisfying, if not quite as iPod-ish. Otherwise, though, the overall effect is very attractive, and the eyebrow-raising compactness of the whole thing makes the iMac G5 a comfortable fit for, say, a kitchen counter. It?s a natural for schools, too, because you can move it from room to room so easily.

Nonetheless, the new design isn?t nearly as radical a breakthrough as the first iMac (that translucent, colourful, all-in-one egg) or the second one (floating screen, white dome-shaped base). This time, Apple didn?t break the mould; instead, it just cleaned up the mould of earlier guts-behind-the-screen computers from Gateway, NEC, IBM and others.

Most of those models flopped. Still, Apple often succeeds where its predecessors failed, whether it?s building an online music store, a chain of retail computer stores or a pocket music player. The devil is in the details, and this particular one-piece flat-panel machine got most of them right.

For example, the iMac?s stereo speakers are invisible. They?re built into the bottom edge of the screen, so that they bounce sound off the desk. Better yet, they?re much more powerful than most built-in computer speakers. They don?t exactly rattle the windows, but they nicely fill a small room with clean sound.

Apple?s chief, Steve Jobs, has gone on record as loathing the noise made by computer fans (the spinning kind, not the human kind that show up at Macworld Expos). Considering the heat generated by its 1.6- or 1.8-gigahertz G5 processor, the iMac?s silence is quite an achievement. There are other niceties. The back panel is easy to remove when you want to instal memory or a wireless card; the three screws involved don?t even drop out, thanks to a merciful ?captive? design. Apple also eliminated the ugliness of the ?brick? that is a standard part of modern power cords. Only a slender white cable slips out the back to plug into the wall.

There?s been some online griping about the placement of the new iMac?s connectors. They?re arra-nged vertically on the back. ?No wonder Apple?s iMac photos never show anything plugged in, like printers, cameras or iPods,? goes the complaint. ?The dangling cords would destroy the futuristic purity of the hovering-screen look.?

The cables do look pretty cluttery, but only from the side. From the front, you don?t see them. Still, you can do your part to support Jonathan Ive?s anti-clutter campaign by ordering your iMac with the optional Bluetooth feature ($50), which means you can use Apple?s cordless keyboard and mouse duo ($100), and an AirPort card ($80), which means you can connect to a wireless network. (NYTNS)