Steve Jobs hated British plugs (he said that at the UK launch of the original iPhone).
Jony has probably exhausted all resources to try and make them as small and as neat as possible.
That's interesting. Since we use the same plugs here in Ireland, I hope to see the same design here (for this and other Apple devices) particularly since it's 100% backwards compatible
I have to say, for making UK-style plugs smaller and more useful though, nothing beats this!