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?