Wouldn’t you know it! Just as it looked like it was shaping up to be another slow week for Apple news, interesting stuff happened this week. So, we’re going to sidetrack from discussing Apple’s move into the living room and actually talk about Apple computers.

Well, in a little bit. But first, this week Apple announced a “Complete My Album” program for the iTunes Store. One of the things I really like about purchasing songs online is that I can buy “just songs”. We’ve all at one time or another had to by an entire album just to get one or two songs we really like. Sometimes the rest of the album is wonderful – sometimes the other songs appear to be just “filler”.

In the past, if you bought a couple of songs from an album online, then discovered you wanted the entire album, the 99 cents you already spent on the individual songs had to be spent again if you bought the album.

No more. Now, for six months after the purchase of individual songs on the iTunes Store, you can buy the rest of the album and get credit for the songs you’ve already purchased. If you open iTunes, go to the Store, and click on the “Complete My Album” button, iTunes will present you with a list of the full albums that contain the songs you’ve purchased. With one click you get the album, minus the cost of the songs you’ve already purchased.

In other iTunes-related news, Apple and EMI, one of the “top four” record companies, announced an agreement this week to begin offering the entire EMI catalog without DRM (digital rights management) attached. This means you’ll be able to listen to EMI songs purchased from iTunes on any portable digital music player that can play AAC (advanced audio codec). That’s just about any new player out there – even Microsoft’s Zune. The new non-DRM music is also twice the “quality” of the old, and will cost $1.29 per song instead of 99 cents. Once the new music is available, you’ll be able to re-download the higher quality, non-DRM versions of music you already bought for the 30-cent difference.

This week Apple also announced a version of their high-end Mac Pro desktop that packs two quad-core Xeon screaming 64-bit processors. Yes, you heard that right. Eight processor cores. Just in time for the new version of Photoshop and other pro applications Apple is rumored to announce next week!