Speaking of rosy news to keep your weekend attitude all bright and sunshiney, how 'bout them Apple retail stores? We already knew from Apple's last quarterly earnings conference call that they were in the black and doing well; sales had almost doubled from the previous year, which wasn't a huge surprise given how many new stores had opened, but the fact that average per-store revenue was up by 35% showed some real hustle. There's also the recent revelation by Apple retail guru Ron "Slappy" Johnson that Apple's retail chain is the first in history to reach $1 billion in sales in just three years. And, of course, we'd be remiss if we didn't mention Apple's recent and tremendously successful "Buy a PowerBook, Get a Free Bag of Ants" promotion.

Well, let's dip one more Feelgood McNugget into the honey mustard, shall we? The Mac Observer notes that This Week In Consumer Electronics has just published its annual Top 100 list of consumer electronics retailers, and Apple vaulted all the way from last year's 34th place up to an eminently respectable 23rd. And while Apple's estimated $746 million in yearly sales pales in comparison to the heavy hitters in the top ten (Best Buy, for example, clocked in at $19.5 billion), it actually finished up ahead of some reasonably well-established names, like Buy.com ($494 million) and J&R Computer World ($263 million). The real surprise (to us, anyway) was that Apple placed just one spot and $1 million below online powerhouse Amazon.com, which, okay, doesn't have physical retail stores, but has been doing the e-sales thing forever now.

For its part, TWICE credits the mass appeal of the iPod and the iTunes Music Store for Apple's climb to #23; we're more inclined to attribute Apple's staggering retail success to the public's ravenous and previously unanswered demand for bags of ants, but whatever. Meanwhile, TWICE senior editor Alan Wolf acknowledges that Apple's eleven-spot jump was "quite a leap" and says it's partly to do with the company's transcendent Sonyesque brand and "unique niche." Apple's only real danger, says TWICE, is that of "growing too big and too fast," which is what nuked the Gateway stores. (Well, that and the fact that they sold crappy computers; never forget the crappy computers. Because, you know. Crappy.)

That said, we already know that Apple plans to open another ten stores by the end of the year, and continues to scout hundreds of locations for more. Indeed, faithful viewer mrmgraphics pointed out a MacMinute blurb reporting that the Pittsburgh City Planning Commission has officially approved an Apple store in Shadyside, so at some point in the oh-so-unspecified future, Mac-happy Pittsburghers will no longer have to schlep threeish hours all the way out to Columbus for their Apple retail fix. We're not terribly worried about the "too big, too fast" phenomenon smacking Apple in the face; after all, the company certainly takes its own sweet time finding the "perfect" locations. Between that, the fact that it sells decidedly non-crappy computers, and the public's ever-growing love for a sack full of arthropods, we wouldn't be surprised if Apple climbed another five or six spots by the time next year's TWICE list comes out.

But again, don't hold us to it or anything.