Tony Bennett was right when he sang "What a difference a day makes." Allow me a little license in talking about one working day rather than Tony's "twenty four little hours," but a remarkable turnaround occurred during the past week.

Two weeks ago I noted Apple's confirmation that the 27in iMac would ship in December as originally announced, contrary to an earlier rumour that deliveries might not start until the New Year.

But last Friday, Cnet reported "The 27-inch iMac now has a vague ship date of January, not exactly an improvement over the previous estimate."

But by Monday, Cnet had changed its tune: "A few MacRumors forum members who snagged the new large-screen iMacs say they've received notices indicating that the order status has been changed to 'Preparing for Shipment.' At least one person also said his credit card has been charged.

"Both signs mean the 27-inchers are almost ready to be handed off to the shippers."

MacRumors subsequently noted "Apple has now begun shipping these early orders, with many customers seeing delivery dates of December 18 while a few are seeing dates as early as December 13. We're also hearing from customers outside of the United States that their orders are similarly progressing toward shipment."

This presumably applies only to orders that were placed early in the piece. If you haven't got round to ordering that 27-incher, Apple's currently quoting January delivery for new orders via its online store. If you must have a new iMac by Christmas, it looks like you'll have to make do with a 21.5in model unless you strike it lucky at an Apple Store or reseller.

I have mixed feelings about iTunes 11.

My use of the program is probably atypical, as it is primarily a way of getting podcasts onto my iPod mini. For that, it works as well as ever once you figure out the Library popup menu that switches between Music, Podcasts, Movies and so on, or you make the sidebar visible.

I keep the sidebar hidden most of the time, preferring to use the real estate to see more of the details available in the List view. The icons used in the sidebar are once again in living colour, so I'm optimistic that the greyscale faction within Apple's UI team has been defeated and looking forward to the reappearance of colour icons in the Finder's sidebar, hopefully as soon as OS X 10.8.3.

Instead of ejecting the iPod from the Sidebar or more rarely via iTune's Dock icon, I use the eject button in the tab bar. And while the Downloads section has disappeared from the Sidebar, a Safari-like Downloads button appears next to the Search bar while downloading is in progress.

I've also left the Status Bar hidden - knowing that it would take the best part of two months non-stop playback to get through all the podcasts on my Mac doesn't help my state of mind.

I'm still not sure whether or not I like the changes to text display in iTunes 11. It might just be slightly larger than in iTunes 10 (I can't easily do a side-by-side comparison to check whether it is the same font), but it also seems more tightly kerned than I'd like. That does allow more text to fit into a column of given width, but even after several days use I still think "err, that doesn't look right" every time I bring the program to the front.

iTunes comes in handy when I feel like listening to some different music, and the Internet radio feature is much the same as ever, despite rumours that it would be eliminated in version 11.

The new Album view leaves me feeling indifferent. Some people seem to be very agitated by the change, and I am surprised by the loss of Cover Flow which was ideal for (and designed for) this purpose. But it's not a big deal for me.

I have seen people complain about the removal of album art from the lower left corner of the iTunes window, but it is shown next to the controls in the main window and the new-look mini-player. If you want it shown larger, just click on the small version.

What I would like to see is a way to filter out any items whose Grouping or Genre field is set to "Podcast" - it just doesn't seem sensible to present podcasts as if they were albums - as well as a widespread use of tooltips to save us from having to use trial and error to determine the function of the various buttons. Tooltips would also be helpful for displaying the full text of any field that doesn't fit inside the width of its column.

So what do you like or dislike about iTunes 11?

Apple has stated it will ship the new iMac on schedule (despite a rumour to the contrary), but only just.

When the new iMac was announced, Apple said the 21.5in model would go on sale in November and the 27in in December.

But earlier this month a rumour started circulating that the first shipments would be delayed - possibly until the New Year - as a result of manufacturing issues.

Apple has now announced a specific on-sale date for the 21.5in iMac: November 30 (ie, tomorrow). That applies to Apple's physical and online stores, and "select" Apple resellers. Apple couldn't cut it any closer, but from memory this isn't the first time the company has delivered on the last day of the promised month.

The 27in iMac won't ship until an as yet unspecified date in December. While Apple will take orders for it via the online Apple Store, there was no mention of availability in physical stores. Presumably that's just an indication that Apple will be taking online pre-orders from tomorrow, as the company previously announced the 27in model will be available in stores.

The 21.5in iMac starts at $1429 and the 27in at $1999.

It might be billed as a "Macintosh Portable running OS X" but it really isn't.

Patrick Blampied has completed a great project but I'd suggest it is more accurately described as a Hackintosh in an unusual case than a Macintosh Portable running OS X..

A Hackintosh is a non-Apple computer running OS X. Where most Hackintosh builders select conventional PC motherboards and other parts to construct something broadly equivalent to a Mac Pro at a bargain price, Blampied has taken a very different tack.

He's gutted a Macintosh Portable (which was sold between 1989 and 1991) and used the shell to house the works from a Toshiba netbook. The case itself is apparently unmodified, but a lot of work went into reworking the keyboard.

It's an amusing and in some ways impressive project, but despite Blampied's observations, I'm not convinced it's really in the same league as restoring and riding a fixie in terms of using old technology.

On the subject of old and misdescribed computers, this week I came across the headline "World's oldest digital computer brought back to life" . The article was about the restoration of the 1951 Harwell Dekatron computer. Close, but no coconut: CSIRAC, Australia's first digital computer, dates from 1949 and is still intact and on display at the Melbourne Museum.

There seems to be a fad for 'what I'd like to see in the next version of OS X' blog posts. Here's my contribution to the tsunami.

Most Mac owners pay a premium for good-quality colour displays. So what's with the grey sidebar icons in Finder windows? When I upgraded to Lion I realised how much I relied on colour to quickly distinguish Downloads (previously green) from Favorites (previously red). The same goes for iTunes, and probably other pieces of software. I know there are workarounds, but I wish Apple would just reverse that unnecessary change.

Another simple fix would be to stop hiding the Library folder. I can see why you'd want to stop naive users trampling around, so how about this: only hide it from non-admin accounts.

As much as I'd like to see the return of RSS support, I've given up on that happening.

I've pretty much come to terms with autosave and versions, but one thing I'd like changed is that you should be able to duplicate a document even if you don't have write access to the folder that contains the original. The Documents folder could be used as a temporary home until you explicitly save the duplicate for the first time.

While I don't use full-screen mode, I can understand why those who do would like to see better support for full-screen mode and multiple displays.

I have mixed feelings about proposals to separate the functions of iTunes into multiple applications. It has become something of a Swiss Army Knife, but since I use it for very little other than managing podcasts on my iPod, it's not really an issue for me. That said, it always seemed weird that iTunes had anything at all to do with managing photos.

Something I definitely don't want is for Apple to mess around with the Desktop. If I put something there, it's for a reason - and I don't want it to move unless I explicitly move it.

Another is that while I like the idea that I don't have to worry about exactly where a particular audio track, photo, etc is stored thanks to iTunes and iPhoto, I'm not comfortable with the 'lock in' enforced by iCloud. If I have another application that can open a document, I should be able to use it without going through the hoops. (But then I was a fan of the failed document-centric OpenDoc concept, which would have let users specify which piece of software would be used to display or edit which type of content in compound documents.)

Forgive me if I sound like a broken record (what's the equivalent of skeuomorphism in language?), but I still have a nagging feeling that the driver behind many of the changes Apple's made is a progressive de-emphasis of OS X in favour of iOS.

One other thing, though it's not a software issue: I know I'm not the only person that dislikes the 'fat arse' look (scroll down to the penultimate photo on the page) of the new iMac. The slightly bulging back of the previous models was much more stylish and had a commonality with the iPhone and iPad. Thin edges might 'work' for the MacBook Air, but aren't really relevant to a desktop. Still, I suppose the design slightly reduces the material requirements.