The unchanging laws of electricity still make this article...
...current
...current
The traditional use of a ground-plug in these situations is to protected the user against electric shock should "hot" a wire get loose and touch the metal case. But when the voltage is dropped to non-lethal amounts (or if you have a plastic case) this is unnecessary. In fact, most "third wires" don't even make it to the device- they terminate in the transformer box. So the Mac plug was truly a bit perplexing.
But now I know why.