Well, the rumors of a 23-inch iMac were wrong. It’s a 24-inch iMac. While the 20″ iMac now goes for $1500 ($200 less than before), for an extra $500, or $300 more than a 20″ iMac cost last week, you get the considerable extra screen real estate in addition to an advanced graphics card (the 20″ has an ATI Radeon X1600, the 24″ an NVIDIA GeForce 7300 GT). The entire iMac line was also furnished with the new Core 2 Duo chips, and the Mac Mini line was made Core Duo across the board. The cheapest iMac, the 17″, now sells for $1000, or $300 less than before.

But that’s not what this entry’s title is about. Rather, it’s about September 12th, when Apple has a big media event, which they are touting with the logo at right, proclaiming that “It’s Showtime.” Most everyone figures this means that Apple is going to release their movie download service, a reasonable interpretation.

But the really interesting thing is that the 24″ iMac and CPU upgrades were no small deal; usually, they’d get a show of their own. Instead, just a week before an Apple media event, the iMac and Mac Mini upgrades were quietly announced, with no great fanfare. That suggests that whatever Apple is going to release on the 12th, it’s big enough not to leave room for today’s upgrades… and that’s saying something.

Expectations: aside from the movie download service, people are talking about the long-awaited iPhone, with sources saying that it’s finally ready. Others say a video iPod, but probably just because the video service seems ready to go. However, others say that Apple has a whole new media center solution (maybe hardware) ready to go, and the movie downloads may be of DVD quality, not iPod-sized. It could even be a new kind of video download service altogether, with perhaps the TV downloads also going higher-resolution.

In any case, we’ll know the answers in a week.

Update: Via MacRumors, Variety and AP are already talking about the movie downloads as a certainty, noting that Apple will probably only have Disney on board at first, as the studios are balking at Apple’s low, fixed price structure.