How strange; apparently Apple's had some sort of drastic corporate personality shift or something, because its standard of quality seems to have ratcheted up a few thousand points overnight. Whereas just a couple of days ago every single Apple product listed at the company's online store rated "5 Apples" because the folks at the company "think they're great," now they all rate zero Apples, which we can only assume means that the very same people now "think they blow chunks." We haven't seen a mood swing this drastic or abrupt since Sybil.

Oh, wait-- never mind. Apparently the products don't rate zero Apples after all; faithful viewer andrü informs us that, according to MacMinute, Apple has simply eliminated the "rating" system for its own products entirely. So instead of every Apple product automatically getting a "5 Apples" score, now they're just devoid of any form of evaluation whatsoever, no matter how empty and self-serving; third party products at the Apple Store can still be rated from one to five stars and reviewed by customers in 300 words or less, while Apple's own products just... are. It's a slightly odd juxtaposition now that we look at it.

Still, this is probably the closest you're going to see to an admission by the company that the whole "5 Apples" thing was probably a bad idea to begin with. Sure, it was cute, but we could see it coming off as needy to some people, cocky to others, and just plain dorky to some of the rest. Clearly Apple eventually came around to the same point of view, since it had already toned down its FAQ to downplay the intentional goofiness of the whole "5 Apples" rating-- a FAQ from which any and all mention of that particular topic has now been expunged. Apart from the unsettling feeling of emptiness you might experience when reading Apple product descriptions at the Apple Store, it's like those ratings never existed at all.

But does Apple really intend to leave its own products conspicuously ratingless while everything else at the Apple Store has a user-determined star rating and attached customer reviews? Is the company really so allergic to potential criticism that it can't bear the idea of someone giving the iPod U2 Special Edition four stars instead of five because it doesn't come with a lock of Bono's hair? Because frankly, Apple preventing customers from rating its own products smacks of a deep-seated inferiority complex that most savvy buyers would smell a mile away; we can't say that it would necessarily send suspicious potential Mac/iPod customers clicking away to buy a Wintel and a Digital Jukebox from Dell, of course, but in any case, a perceived lack of confidence on a manufacturer's part can't be good for business.

Well, sources say that Apple isn't planning to allow customer ratings of its own products anytime soon, but fear not, because sources say that something else is coming to fill the gaping void left by the departure of the uniform "5 Apples" ratings. How does a uniform "10 Apples" rating sound? Twice as good, right? Right!