The latest scandal in the world of Apple continues to rage-- but since it's raging on the other side of the ocean, we yanks are somewhat shielded from its heat. Still, even with the buffer zone of the Mighty Atlantic, "ExpoScam" is raising whispers and sidelong glances here in the U.S., while in England it's given rise to howls of fury and more expletives than the director's cut of the South Park movie. If you've been paying attention, you know the drill: First Apple pulled out of Apple Expo '98 when the planners tried to make the show cross-platform. Then they canceled the 1999 show, promising that Apple Expo 2000 would be huge. Then they decided that Apple Expo 2000 isn't worth showing up for after all, leaving a slew of exhibitors holding the bag yet again.

While until now we'd never heard official Apple word that they'd be skipping the Apple Expo again, it appears that the rumors were true: a Macworld UK article reports that "Apple UK... confirmed that it will not maintain even a token presence at the Mac show." Not a single poster, not a stack of brochures, not even an autographed picture of Steve Jobs mounted to a dart board. That's a pretty serious setback to a Mac show with a full-fledged Steve Jobs keynote originally on the agenda. So it looks like another Apple Expo sans Apple, and the organizers of the show scheduled an emergency meeting with all the exhibitors to try to determine whether or not they should just scrap the whole conference altogether.

Ironically enough, though, that emergency meeting was postponed, because "very few people" were able to attend. Yikes, is there an outbreak of Appleitis in the U.K.? The exhibitors can't be bothered to show up to a meeting to discuss what to do now that Apple can't be bothered to show up. We strongly suspect that this mysterious no-show disease is viral in nature and spreading rapidly. There's probably a seminar on the phenomenon down at the local clinic, but to be honest, we just really don't feel like going.