Erratum time! As you all know, we here at AtAT make mistakes so infrequently we're actually classified as Grade 7 Perfection Deities in some official handbook or other that we just now made up in our heads. Every couple of thousand years, however, an error slips through, and once or twice a millennium it's one that's consequential enough to merit an actual correction. Well, consider today a red letter day, because remember a couple of days ago when we made a whole big thing about how Apple had rejected our application for the new iTunes Affiliate Program? As it turns out, the degree of our rightness on that topic was suboptimal. Meaning, that was not the most right we'd ever been.

Okay, fine, we were wrong. Happy now?

See, having heard repeatedly from multiple sources over the years that Apple's corporate take on our little show here is that we're just another one of those rumors sites it so despises, when we applied for the program on Wednesday morning, we were 100% expecting an immediate rejection-- so when we got one a few hours later, we nodded once in grim self-satisfaction, produced our scene, and promptly put the whole matter out of our minds. Imagine our surprise 36 hours later, then, when we suddenly received email with the subject line "Apple iTunes Congratulations! You've been accepted to the iTunes Affiliate Program." Figuring it for an oh-so-subtle gag by an AtAT viewer with a dorky sense of humor and too much time on his hands, we nevertheless opened the message and read it.

"We are thrilled to welcome you as a partner," it gushed (well, as far as boilerplate text can gush, anyway)-- and it included startling details from our application, including our previously-determined username and password for the iTunes Affiliate site. If this was some viewer's lame gag, said viewer not only had the aforementioned dorky sense of humor and too much time on his hands, but also access to Apple's secure servers... which, if he did, surely he'd be too busy downloading credit card info and iTunes Volume Discount Program redemption codes to be messing with our heads. Frankly, confusing us is about as much of a challenge as making water wet, so what's the point?

So we dug up Wednesday's rejection letter and read it a little more carefully: "We regret that we can not accept your company into the Apple Store Associates Program at this time..."

Ohhhhh, the Apple Store Associates Program. Right. See, we totally forgot about clicking some check box somewhere during the iTunes application process that offered to double up our submission; as the iTunes Affiliates page mentions, all applicants to the iTunes program are invited to "apply to the Apple Store Affiliate Program"-- gee, the name just changed, there-- as well, which pays commissions on referred sales at the online Apple Store. And evidently whoever's in charge of the Apple Store program shot us back a rejection quicker than you can say "Good God No," while the folks running the iTunes program chewed it over for a day or so and then decided to let us in.

So, yeah, apparently we're all hooked up on the iTunes front, and if you click that charming little charcoal tag to the right, there, you'll be taken to the iTMS-- and if you buy anything within 24 hours of clicking through, Apple will kick us a 5% finder's fee. (We'll find a permanent place for the link to live soon. Right now we just want to see if it works.) So if you're in the mood for 99 cents' worth of downloady goodness, please consider buying through this link so we can see if a nickel really does miraculously teleport into our piggy bank.

And there you have it, folks; we may be too trashy to hawk Macs, but apparently we just barely squeaked by Apple's "YOU MUST BE AT LEAST THIS RESPECTABLE TO PIMP SONGS" requirement. And although this marks the first time in seven years that AtAT will theoretically be getting paid by Apple, we'd like to take this opportunity to assure you that the fact that we're now on Apple's payroll will in no way alter the AtAT content you know and love. It'll be just as packed full of Apple jingoism and cheerleadery rah-rah-rahs as always, except maybe with a little less executive team namecalling. And slightly fewer death threats. And a complete lack of criticism of any Apple policies, product shortcomings, or crimes against man, society, or nature. But otherwise it'll be exactly the same; after all, we have our integrity.