Ah, the day after Halloween... right now, millions of Americans are dragging themselves out of sugar-induced comas, tossing the jack-o-lanterns on the trash pile, and pondering the best method to get the toilet paper out of the trees. Hopefully those of you so geographically inclined enjoyed the holiday in the manner of your choosing. The AtAT staff, unsurprisingly, opted for a mellow evening watching the back-to-back Buffy Halloween episodes by blacklight while doling out Sweet-Tarts, Dum-Dums, and Twizzlers to the subset of the local populace shameless enough to don costumes and beg for candy. As for scares, pretty much the most frightening thing we saw all night was our ridiculous candy overstock, as a mere dozen or so kidlings worked up the courage to raid the AtAT compound. Despite our best efforts to dole out giant fistfuls of sugar to each sullen teen visitor, we've got a distressingly large mound of treats left in the bowl. (That doesn't sound scary to you? Then consider the fact that we're still eating leftover candy from last year's festivities. Aaaaiiieeeee!!)

Now, what we were hoping to encounter was something really scary, like a distressingly accurate Key Lime iBook costume. Ideally some enterprising young soul would have appeared at our door all dolled up as Apple's most radioactive product to date, and we could have been blinded and vaguely sickened at the agonizing glow thrown off by a giant Key Lime costume bathed in our hippy-trippy blacklight. Alas, it wasn't to be-- perhaps due in part to a lack of real-life models upon which to fashion a costume. According to MacMonkey, shipping delays of "a week or more" are casting Apple Store iBook customers into the frightening realm of the traditional "Where's My Order?" game-- which hopefully won't mutate into the truly terrifying "Ever-Extending Ship Date" phenomenon.

Right now, Key Lime iBook customers are being notified via email that their orders are expected to ship in "the first week of November," so currently there's no particular need to run screaming through the streets. Then again, perhaps it's frightening enough that there are enough people ordering Key Lime iBooks to trigger a supply problem and the resulting shipping delay. And there's also the lurking specter of Key Lime floor models showing up when Apple's brightest iBook surfaces at retail following the company's elimination of the "Apple Store Only" policy. Last but not least, there's the terrifying possibility that when we finally see Key Lime live and in person, we'll actually-- choke-- like it. Good lord, NO!!

Years of continued abuse probably has the UK Mac community feeling sort of like the vegetarian at the office luncheon-- shafted on a regular basis. After Apple's repeated cancellation of London-based Expo appearances, the elimination of UK-localised versions of the Mac OS, and the closing of several UK Apple jobs (particularly in the sales and marketing areas) in favor of a more "European" focus, one would think that the Mac-using Brits would have had enough. And indeed, they bloody well had-- to the extent that protesters originally planned to interrupt Uncle Steve's keynote at the last Paris love-fest, though Apple's offer to meet with the protesters after the show instead prevented such a scene.

So what's next on the anti-Brit agenda for Apple? Well, how about massive price differentials and the return of the "grey market"? According to MacUser, the Euro is falling compared to the British Pound Sterling, resulting in a price gap between costs of Apple gear to UK dealers and the costs of the same gear to dealers in other European nations. Reportedly the average disparity is "around eight per cent," but sometimes higher; a 17-inch Studio Display, for example, goes for about £275 in Denmark-- but it's £349 in the UK. In order to scrape out a reasonable living, this has led some dealers to consider buying their merchandise from other countries and reselling them in the UK for a bigger profit margin.

UK dealers are using the threat of this so-called "grey importing" strategy to try to force Apple UK to lower its prices. Granted, fluctuations in international currencies aren't exactly Apple's fault (aside from Steve running the Illuminati, who controls all the money in the world, but that's hardly germane to the current discussion), but still, Mac dealers in the UK can't be too thrilled right about now. Chalk it up to just one more bummer in the overall Mac-Brit landscape. Man, if the law of karma holds, someday the UK is going to be showered with free Cubes or something just to balance the scales...

We may not know art, but we know what we like. Thanks to a link to auction house Sotheby's we saw over at MacInTouch, the AtAT staff is drooling at the thought of owning a Pop Art rendition of the Apple logo done by none other than the late, great Andy Warhol himself. That's right; if you're the lucky winning bidder, you could take home a mint-condition, signed and numbered screenprint featuring Apple's famed rainbow logo and the words "Apple" and "Macintosh" all rendered in vibrant colors and sketchy lines against a backdrop of pastel hues. This Lenox Museum Board print (over three feet on a side) is just the thing to brighten the den or lend a touch of class to the john. A must for any Mac aficionado!

Now, we'd love to have placed the first bid on this sucker, but sadly, someone beat us to it. Worse yet, the meanie who started the bidding actually paid attention to the published estimated value of the piece and set the bar at $10,000, which is sadly well out of AtAT's currently-just-shy-of-breaking-even budget right now. So unless Apple's stock shoots up to, say, $120 a share by the end of the week, a far more solvent art lover is going to walk away with the prize. That's a pity, because we think it'd look just spiffy hanging over the AtAT server right between the sad clown with the big eyes and the painting of dogs playing poker. (It's so cute-- the Doberman is cheating!)

Alas, short of a massive windfall (or a faithful viewer winning the auction to gussy up our pad-- hint, hint), it seems that the AtAT studios will be devoid of the appropriate Warhol gracing its walls. Luckily, Sotheby's isn't the only source for great art online. We're currently considering skipping lunch to free up the funds to bid on a miraculous rendition of The King himself. Sure, it's not exactly Mac-themed or anything, but $2.25 for a velvet Elvis? Thank you, eBay!