usually , my commute to and from work involvesa pleasant ferrying ridefollowed by a brisk manner of walking toMacworld ’s San Francisco office . But a few weeks back , context conspired to push me to falsify my plans — instead of my normal ferry ride , I discover myself using theBART commuter train .
In just the modish example of how my luck commonly works , one of the rarified time I hinge upon BART hap to cooccur witha figurer glitch that shut down the intact system . So with no BART train manoeuvre , I wound up taking the ferry home anyhow , along with several dozen preempt ( and grumpy ) BART commuters .
It would be fair to say the ferry operators reacted swiftly to this unexpected uptick in passenger dealings . The ferry sea captain ’s voice cracked over the intercom , welcoming first - time riders and touting the benefits of frequent ridership — beautiful views of the bay tree , wise breeze , seats for everyone , and the other sort of creature comforts you do n’t typically find on a crowded commuter train train . While he was talking , other crew members walked about the gravy holder , handing out ferrying docket . It was n’t on the button a elusive sales pitching , but it was an effectual one — I’ve notice a few more ferry passengers than before in the ensuing workweek .
There ’s no good time for selling a worthwhile product than when you have a open interview , whether it ’s a boat full of people grumbling about unreliable commuter train gear or disaffected electronic computer users looking for a better way to do their oeuvre . Which is why I think that Apple could take a pageboy out of that opportunist ferry skipper ’s book and start gas its offering while the touting ’s good .
Consider the computing landscape painting these Clarence Shepard Day Jr. . The spillage of Windows Vista has been delayed … again . Concerns over viruses and spyware have n’t ease up any , so far as I screw . And , as Forrester Research reported a little while back , Microsoft does n’t really inspire the warm fuzzies among its business , peculiarly those who are A ) affluent , bacillus ) big on-line spenders , and C ) more likely than not to part directing some of those dollars Apple ’s way .
While all this is happening , look at what Apple ’s got cook . It makes the most popular music player in the cosmos — Apple state it ’s ship more than 50 million iPods — which has give the company an in with the Windows crew . It will be rolling out brand raw Intel - powered computer hardware all yr long , raising the specter of execution improvements . I ’m not saying Apple needs to break out theEllen Feiss footage , but jump on any composition of general Windows dissatisfaction with the message thatthere are viable alternativesmight not be a bad mind .
Of course , maybe Apple ’s already doing that , if not necessarily on the scale of a formal “ Switch ” campaign . The release of Boot Camp has engender a clean amount of pursuit among Mac users . But while being able to boot into Windows XP on a Mac might appeal to gamers who get to play titles that would never seem on this platform or office workers who perfectly have to run Microsoft Access , it ’s something the huge majority of Mac exploiter will in all probability never need to do . Itissomething , however , that would appeal to a good many Windows user , particularly those who ’ve been contemplate a switch to Mac hardware but may not want to dive in completely at first .
So even if Apple is n’t making like the captain of that ferrying gravy holder and explicitly court someone else ’s dissatisfied client , that ’s not to say the company is n’t doing on the nose that in a more subtle way . And it does n’t take much day - dreaming to see how those effort could pay up off for Apple — and the Mac program — a little further down the route .
Edited to correct the name of Ellen Feiss , whose last name is not “ Fleiss ” as some web log author would have you trust .
