So apparently it wasn't just a year-end legal blowout after all-- but you could hardly blame us for thinking that, right? After all, Apple's lawyers did go on a wild trade secret suing spree right at the end of 2004; in mid-December the company sued a John Doe for leaking info about its upcoming Asteroid audio interface, and mere days later Apple smacked down a trio of developers for allegedly leaking prerelease Tiger builds to the 'net. Honestly, it was like Apple had a slew of use-'em-or-lose-'em Frequent Litigator miles that were going to expire at the end of the calendar year and the company was just trying to redeem them all before the big ball dropped.

Of course, we now know that that wasn't the case, because as we mentioned briefly yesterday and as reported by CNET, Apple has filed yet another quit-leaking-our-secret-stuff lawsuit (in 2005, mind you), this time against heavy-hitting rumor site Think Secret. And just like the first lawsuit had to mention specifics about the Asteroid rumors, thus essentially confirming that it was all true enough to sue over, this latest suit reportedly contains explicit references to Think Secret's recent articles on Apple's imminent sub-$500 displayless cheapMac and the someday-it'll-grow-up-and-crush-Microsoft-Office-into-dust productivity suite supposedly called iWork. So if you didn't believe the rumors before, folks, now's the time to gear up to start crankin' out memos in iWork's Pages app on your soon-to-be-new, costs-less-than-some-iPods thriftyMac.

Ironically enough, if Apple had just kept its lawyers holstered, the Asteroid, headless-iMac, and iWork rumors would most likely have been totally ignored by the media at large-- and even by the vast majority of Apple's customers, most of whom, we're told, are not obsessive drooling freaks who reload every dodgy rumors site in existence until their clicking fingers bleed so much they pass out from the blood loss. (Sounds crazy, we know, but we're assured that most people don't do that. Sickos.) But legally speaking, we suppose Apple's hands were tied, since if the company doesn't file to protect its trade secrets now, it loses all legal protection for said secrets in the future.

Besides, suing people is fun. We hope to do a lot of it ourselves, someday-- maybe when the kid's off to college and we're looking for stuff to do. We're already studying a very informative pamphlet called How To Get Hit By Cars for Fun and Profit (Mostly Profit).

And anyway, it's not like Apple's lawsuit has changed anything over at Think Secret, right? Faithful viewer Juho Kaivosoja informed us that the site is still up to business as usual, having posted details confirming next week's intro of the long-rumored flash-based iPod. Reportedly they'll come in 1 GB and 2 GB versions for $149 and $199 respectively-- so forget about the whole "screenless" rumor, because no one's going to flip through 500 songs with only "previous" and "next" buttons. While the details of the human interface on this thing remain shrouded in mystery (dang that's a fun phrase to say!), apparently it will have a screen-- one just like the iPod mini's, but "two lines shorter."

Oh, but wait; we don't know if any of this stuff is true! Guess we'll just have to wait and see whether Apple files another lawsuit or not. Or, uh, we could also just wait until the Stevenote on Tuesday. But where's the fun in that?

Who says karma's not real? He who lives by the sword dies by the sword, and the company that lives by the lawsuit gets vaguely annoyed by the lawsuit. In light of Apple's suing frenzy of the past three weeks (in which it's filed no fewer than three suits against people and sites it's accused of leaking trade secrets), is it any wonder that payback has arrived in the form of Apple playing defendant in what is quite possibly the most frivolous lawsuit we've ever had the good fortune to giggle at? Get this, folks: faithful viewer Jason Nieckar informs us that, as reported by Reuters, a California man is suing Apple because, after having purchased songs from the iTunes Music Store, he discovered that he was "'forced' to buy an iPod."

We know exactly what he's talking about; it happened to us, too! Right after we downloaded our first iTMS song, our Mac pulled a gun on us and instructed us to order an iPod from the Apple Store. It even made us pay for-- sob!-- overnight shipping!

Well, okay, not really. (The Mac pulled a knife, not a gun. And we only had to pony up for two-day delivery.) And we know what Mr. Thomas Slattery is getting at; he means that Apple has violated antitrust law by refusing to license its FairPlay Digital Rights Management technology to third party manufacturers looking to make their portable digital music players iTMS-compatible. But claiming that Apple has "leveraged its monopoly in the market for the sale of legal online digital music recordings" is a stretch even Plastic Man wouldn't attempt without months of vigorous training first. After all, did Apple strongarm Tom into buying a song from the iTMS instead of from any of the eight, count 'em, eight WMA-based music services now carrying that insipid "Plays For Sure" trademark? Did Apple block his ability to buy music on CD from the online or brick-and-mortar retailer of his choice and then rip said music into any un-DRMed format he wants?

Heck, let's not even step back that far: Tom says he's an iTMS customer who "'was also forced to purchase an Apple iPod' if he wanted to take his music with him to listen to." Gee, in the universe we inhabit, there are these things called "portable CD players," and they seem to work pretty well for all those poor slobs who can't afford an iPod. Is Tom claiming that Apple somehow threatened him with bodily harm if he so much as thought about burning his iTMS purchases to an audio CD, as iTunes lets the rest of us do without hassle? And did Steve Jobs say he would personally smack around Tom's entire family if Tom burned his iTMS songs to disc and then re-ripped them as open MP3s for playback on just about every digital music player available anywhere, as some of us do routinely specifically for compatibility with non-FairPlay devices? Boy, this guy has it rough.

After all, by Tom's logic (which is apparently that Apple has a monopoly not on music, or even digital downloadable music, but on iTMS music-- help, our brains just melted!), we ought to be able to sue Bungie because if we buy Halo 2, we're "forced" to buy an Xbox to play it on. We can sue Microsoft because Access "forces" us to buy a Wintel system to use it. And we can sue PEZ, because if we buy a pack of PEZ refills, we're "forced" to buy a PEZ dispenser if we want to... um... dispense them. And if you think about it, all of those scenarios are more restrictive than the iTMS situation, since very, very little of the music that Apple sells isn't available from other vendors in other formats compatible with all types of other hardware. Something tells us that ol' Tom's going to sporting a whole extra orifice when the first judge gets through with him.

We could go on and on (and, as regular viewers are all too painfully aware, on and on and on and on and on and on and on), but we'll just leave it at that for now, because our Mac is now threatening to shank us if we don't make it a sandwich and a cup of cocoa. Where's our lawyer when we need him?

And in the constantly shrinking non-lawsuit-related world of Apple, what say we quickly get caught up on recent advances over there in the British Isles? We know, we know-- it's not exactly a regular thing we do. Not that we don't dig the Brits, of course, who are lovely people who say funny words like "pram" and "Marmite" and who kindly keep us in waffles and soy milk by spending way more through our Amazon.co.uk link than those Canadians ever do through our Amazon.ca one. (Seriously, after conversions, it's like a factor of ten. What's up, Canucks?) It's just that AtAT is most definitely a plot-driven show, and more often than not, most of the available Apple-flavored drama is Proudly Made in America (at least, until we start outsourcing our plot work to India). But seeing as there have been two separate and distinct Apple-related plot developments across the pond this week, why not lump 'em together and call it a day?

First up, you think we Yanks had it good when Apple dropped its display prices earlier this week? Well, faithful viewer Ian Parkinson tipped us off to a recent Macworld UK article which reports that, over in the UK, Apple's prices have plummeted on displays and just about every Mac as well. iMacs are up to £50 pounds cheaper, Power Macs are down by £100-200, PowerBooks and all but one iBook model have dropped by a uniform £50 across the board, and even the entry-level eMac got trimmed by £20. Why the reduction, you ask? Well, we figure it's either because 1) Steve Jobs finally feels guilty over having shafted the Brits on a number of occasions a few years back, or 2) the U.S. dollar is devaluing so quickly it will soon be renamed the "Yankee Peso." Either way, it's all good (if you're a Brit).

But wait, there's more! If we pop next door to Ireland, we'll probably witness much rejoicing at the fact that, as faithful viewer mrmgraphics pointed out, the iTunes Music Store is now up and running there after interminable delays. This finally squares a couple of galling inequities; for a couple of months, Ireland was the only Euro-using EU member country without iTMS support, even as Irish supergroup U2 endorsed the store by selling exclusive content there, starring in iTunes TV commercials, and even slapping its name and preferred color scheme on an iPod Special Edition.

Actually, there may be less dancing in the streets in Ireland than we originally thought; faithful viewer Moogintroll reminds us that the iTMS Ireland launch didn't take place until about 9 PM local time, and it was done entirely without fanfare (probably due in part to Apple's mild embarrassment at the iTMS Ireland's late launch). As such, barely anyone was buying anything for a while, and "for a good few hours the top 10 chart was dominated by The Alan Parsons Project." Why do we suspect that Bono's not amused?