For an operating system that hasn’t officially been released yet — and all bets suggest it’ll happen by mid-week — there is some misinformation already flowing fast and loose. Maybe it’s not so serious yet, but you can see the handwriting on the wall.

One particularly annoying tidbit suggested that you need a RAM upgrade to run Lion.

If you examine Apple’s official system requirements for Mac OS 10.7, you’ll find out it’s all about the processor: “Your Mac must have an Intel Core 2 Duo, Core i3, Core i5, Core i7, or Xeon processor to run Lion.” Nothing said about RAM. But most of the Mac models included on that list, which dates back to the end of 2006, have at least 2GB of RAM. As I said in my weekend column, upgrading RAM isn’t easy on some models, and impossible on others, specifically the hot-selling MacBook Air. Indeed, the entry-level MacBook Air, and MacBook for that matter, still provide 2GB of RAM. If you buy one today, either is eligible for a free Lion upgrade, and you don’t need to fret over the memory needs.

That doesn’t mean that Lion will be as snappy as you might like, or that you’ll be able to run loads of your favorite apps in a 10.7 environment without things bogging down. But Apple clearly expects performance will be decent enough that customers won’t feel cheated. Nobody doubts they have used 2GB Macs as part of the internal test scenario, and certainly developers installed Lion betas on a variety of hardware to test for compatibility with their products.

I suppose that tale arose in response to rumors that Apple is quietly asking their retail employees to upgrade memory on demo computers. The story has run in several places, yet it seems nobody bothered to question how that would be done on a MacBook Air, unless they somehow expect service people to perform logic board transplants, which is utterly absurd.

So much for increased memory needs.

The second tidbit of advice will be nerve-wracking if you follow the usual directions. Knowing that there will be no support for PowerPC apps, some uninformed tech pundits suggest you highlight each of your apps, separately, choose Get Info from the Finder’s File menu (or press Command-I), and see if it’s strictly PowerPC. If it is, that app won’t launch under Lion, period. I mentioned Office 2004, and various versions of Intuit’s Quicken as examples, but there are lots more, some dating back to the early days of Mac OS X, in 2001. Most of you will be able to upgrade to a newer version, or perhaps find a different app to fill the same need. If you can’t, you’ll have to avoid Lion, keep Snow Leopard installed on a second hard drive or partition, or use a Windows alternate with Boot Camp or a Windows virtual machine.

But there’s an easier, faster way to find out how much software on your Mac is PowerPC only. Just choose About This Computer from your Apple menu and click More Info, which will launch Apple’s System Profiler. On the left sidebar, choose Software / Applications, and you’ll see a list of everything in a single window, though it may take a few moments to appear. Click on an app’s name, and an information display will appear in the bottom pane that will reveal whether it’s a PowerPC app. You still have to do them one-by-one, but the process is far more efficient. You may also find a third party utility online that’ll catalog these obsolete apps.

When I ran a System Profiler check before writing this article, I was comforted to discover that the apps I need for my work and leisure would still work, though there may be Lion-related glitches that will require updates. Still, a surprising number bore the dreaded PowerPC label, and a few Classics (for the original dead and buried Mac OS) appeared on the list. So you can bet I’ll be reviewing those relics so see why they are still on my Mac’s startup drive, and make a final decision what to do with them. They will likely all be trashed. You may not be so lucky.

But none of this means you should take the Lion leap on Day One. Typical of any major Apple OS upgrade, there will be bugs in the first version that won’t be fixed for a few weeks, when the inevitable 10.7.1 arrives. You may just want to examine the official reviews and online chatter to see if there are show stoppers that would prevent you from having a great experience. But remember that no matter how reliable an OS release might be, someone somewhere will have problems. Maybe their system configuration is off the beaten track and thus creates problems most of you won’t encounter. Or maybe it takes a rare confluence of circumstances to produce a nasty symptom.

As for The Night Owl, we’ll be upgrading to Lion on the very first day, and we’ll will make sure there are recent “clone” backups in case the previous Snow Leopard setup has to be restored. Whatever decision you make about upgrading to Lion, always consider regular backups as your first line of proper system protection.

The latest set of rumors have it that Mac OS X Lion will land in the Mac App Store during the coming week, perhaps on July 14th. Within days, they say, you’ll also be able to order refreshed versions of the MacBook Air, and perhaps some other Macs in need of an upgrade.

Obviously, Apple hasn’t said so yet. There is just the promise of a July 2011 arrival, and the recent report that a Golden Master seed has become available to registered Apple developers. Even then, there’s no certainty that version will be the one to ship. Last minute problems might result in a revision, if Apple doesn’t decide to just wait for a 10.7.1 to address any lingering bugs.

At the same time, it’s a sad fact that a fair number of Mac users will not be able to upgrade to Lion, and therein lies a tale.

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You have to consider how far the iMac has come. Back in 1998, it was an offbeat looking entry-level all-in-one computer. In fact, I was a member of Apple’s Customer Quality Feedback group at the time, which consisted of regular people who evaluated Apple’s hardware and software products. During the last few months in which I was a member of the program, I actually got to beta test an original Bondi Blue iMac.

Now there is no such program today, for obvious reasons. Apple trusts no one outside the company, other than selected partners, parts suppliers and contract factories, to see new prerelease hardware, and then under deep cover.

But cute as it was, I didn’t expect that the iMac would herald a revolution that would restore Apple’s prominence. It was also very much an entry-level box, deriving many of its parts from a PowerBook. Performance was leisurely, and it was a royal pain to replace RAM, since you had to take it almost completely apart. Alas, Apple hasn’t learned much about user-friendly upgrades on consumer gear, although replacing RAM on all Macs these days is pretty simple.

As the iMac went through color and form factor changes, I doubt many suspected it would become a powerhouse, one fully capable of serving the needs of many content creators who would traditionally buy a Mac tower, such as the Mac Pro. As Apple stuffed speedier chips inside, it got fast enough for most consumers, until the fall of 2009 heralded a huge upgrade.

What seemed a slightly ambitious model refresh actually changed the iMac for good, putting it into uncharted territory. Up till then, some Mac journalists — and yours truly — speculated about a headless iMac, something with the guts of the iMac, sans display, with space for a second hard drive. Macworld’s Dan Frakes dubbed the concept, the “Mythical Midrange Mac Minitower,” perhaps imagining a modern day concept of the Macintosh IIci. For those who weren’t using Macs in those days, that model was a pint-sized alternative to the super-expensive Macintosh IIx, with much of the power of the more expensive blend, but less room for expansion.

Apple decision was to stick with the all-in-one form factor, but they improved screen size and display quality. But, alas, not the glossy surface; there’s no matte display option in the tradition of today’s MacBook Pro. But the biggest change was to use higher grade graphics chips and some of the fastest multicore consumer-grade processors to be found in Intel’s parts bin. It was fast enough out of the box, but if you clicked the Customize option at your favorite Apple reseller, you could get your 27-inch iMac equipped with an 2.8GHz Intel quad-core i7 processor, supporting hyperthreading, making four cores simulate eight, and all the other performance goodies. That’s the one I bought, and I was replacing a 2008 Mac Pro.

In the end, selling a fairly well equipped Mac Pro, and a 30-inch display, got me enough money to buy a tricked out 27-inch iMac, a 1TB FireWire 800 backup drive, and leave me with $300 change. Not too shabby.

I have never felt slighted of performance. Everything seemed snappier; that is, until I visited a client this week to set up his new iMac, a 27-inch model from the current generation. He optioned it to a fare-thee-well, with the 3.4GHz Intel quad-core i7, 16 GB RAM and, to boost performance even further, he had Apple install a 256GB solid state drive, in addition to the stock 1TB mechanical drive.

After adding Microsoft Office 2011 and other odds and ends, he ended up with a package costing well north of $3,000. But that’s not the real story.

He took his new iMac out of the box, but didn’t hook it up until my arrival, so I could guide him on migrating his content from a 2004 vintage Power Mac G5.

I could see an incredible speed boost at the first startup, where it took less than 15 seconds to open to the Setup Assistant. After migrating data from the old computer — and the Migration Assistant wouldn’t support his old box, so we had to bring everything over manually — I spent some time testing performance with a number of apps, to get a real handle on the advantages of SSD.

Understand that, in raw computing power, a 2011 iMac is a fair amount speedier than the 2009 version. That’s a given, having gone through two more processor generations. I knew of SSD’s potential, but watching the startup process take a fraction of what it did with a regular hard drive was the eye opener. Many disk-related tasks were near instantaneous, and even slugs such as Microsoft Word seemed far snappier than I’ve ever seen them.

Sure, SSD isn’t cheap. If you check most of the extra hardware offered, the top-of-the-line 27-inch iMac’s price of admission scales from $1,999 to $3,649, done by taking my client’s configuration, upping the traditional drive to 2TB, and enhancing the graphics card to 2GB. That takes the iMac well into Mac Pro territory, but the latter can be configured in ways that move it well above $10,000, so you’re still way ahead.

With the arrival of Thunderbolt peripherals, it may be possible for creative pros to buy a fully outfitted iMac, the necessary external gear, and be able to be quite as productive as most Mac Pro users. They will also pay a whole lot less money, which means that Apple may actually sell far more units to customers who ordinarily upgrade only when the old hardware is way past its prime.

While I still expect to see new Mac Pros for a few more years, I doubt I’ll ever need to buy one.

In the roll-up to the announcement of the iPad 2 earlier this year, tech pundits were rushing to be first with speculation as to what might change. A lighter, slimmer form factor seemed a given, not to mention a more powerful CPU. But then it became hazy, with some floating the possibility of a higher resolution display, an iPad equivalent to the iPhone’s Retina Display.

That’s all well and good, but then common sense considerations came to the forefront. Could Apple source tens of millions of higher resolution displays for roughly the same price they are paying now? There may be some wiggle room, if Apple could cut the price of other components to compensate, but at the end of the day, it’s clear they wanted the prices to remain unchanged.

Well, as you all know, the display of this year’s iPad is not altogether different from last year’s model. Sure, maybe some of you believe, as I do, that reading comfort would improve with sharper text, but it’s not that lots of people are complaining. Besides, would you really want to pay an extra $50 o $100 for the privilege of owning, say, a mythical iPad 2 Pro — or “Plus” as some refer to it?

Now the rumor mills are at it again, claiming that Apple is getting quotes for displays with higher pixel counts, perhaps in advance of introducing a new iPad this fall. Of course, that was the prediction this past spring, when the iPad 2 didn’t deliver on a higher resolution display, so it’s nothing new.

Even if you take those rumors at face value, that doesn’t mean a new model is perhaps two or three months away. For one thing, the production lines would have to ramp up in the next month or so to ensure a big supply of product on the day of introduction. Apple clearly doesn’t want to be caught in the midst of another endless backlog situation, one that persists to this day with the iPad 2. In fact, as of the time I’m writing this article, the waiting time at Apple’s online store is still one to two weeks, unchanged for quite a while. That doesn’t mean you can’t just go into a local store and buy one. In fact, I visited a Target store in Scottsdale, AZ this past weekend, and found a handful locked in a display case. But getting the one you want on the spot may be hit or miss, even though there are also reports that production yields continue to improve.

But here it is in early July, with Apple still fighting an iPad 2 inventory problem. It may be weeks before things settle down, assuming demand continues to hold up. So would it make sense from a marketing standpoint to just stop building the current model and introduce a newer model this fall, in time for the holiday season?

I fail to see the logic in gutting one successful product for another when it’s not even possible to keep up with demand for the existing model. Apple is known to toss designs overboard in revising products, and the iPod is a notable example, but they’ve been running on an annual upgrade calendar for that line. There seems to be no reason to refresh the iPad until 2012.

Perhaps there could be a more expensive “Pro” model, as I suggested. But in the scheme of things, Apple has, for once, actually been able to sell a product at a price that competitors continue to struggle to match. Yes, you can get cheaper tablets, but they are mostly junk that most customers, except perhaps in third world countries, don’t care about. Even for stuff that’s intended to be a straight on iPad alternative, demand is tepid. The public wants the iPad, not the wannabes from Samsung, Motorola, and RIM. And I don’t expect much action for the new HP tablet. Even the executive in charge of that division, who used to run the iPod division at Apple, concedes the current state of the tablet’s WebOS is probably equivalent to the earliest iterations of Mac OS X, thus not quite ready for prime time.

Of course, I may be all wrong about this, but I’m convinced that commentators expecting a new iPad from Apple this fall are looking at the wrong product. The one that will appear is a new iPhone, whether it’s called the iPhone 5 or iPhone 4GS, or whatever.

The sensible speculation would be what form the next iPhone will take. Some suggest a minor refresh, with revised components, such as an eight megapixel camera, the same A5 processor that’s used in the iPad 2, and other changes. Maybe there will be minor alterations to the case, especially if Apple builds a world phone that contains hardware for both GSM and CDMA. If that happens, the antenna system would have to be changed to accommodate both networks, and I suppose Apple could use the occasion to attempt to reduce the impact of that legendary “Death Grip.”

Others suggest that Apple is already shopping for components to build a thinner, lighter iPhone, perhaps with an edge-to-edge screen to better compete with smartphones that sport larger displays. This seems less likely, though you can’t predict very much when it comes to Apple.

At the end of the day, it’ll be fun to speculate about the new iPhone, and perhaps the next iPod refresh. But talking about another iPad release this year is just a waste of time.