Minority Report: Tempting the 'iPod to Mac' switchers

With the release of its latest Mac operating system, Tiger, Apple is upping the ante in its bid to win over Windows users - and to convert proud iPod owners into Mac desktop owners, says Seb Janacek.

Apple's inexorable progress through the big cat family for its operating system code names continued this month with the launch of Tiger, the fifth major incarnation of Mac OS X.

The operating system has come a long way since the public beta was released in late 2000, when early adopters endured a dual-boot limbo due to a distinct lack of third-party apps written for the new OS. The system was buggy, slow and missing key features such as DVD support.

Since then, the output from Apple's development mill has been prodigious, and if OS X finally came of age with Panther (version 10.3), then Tiger feels like an embellished and polished upgrade to a finished product.

In fact, Apple is so pleased with its new big cat, it seems, there are signs afoot that it may be about to resurrect its Switch campaign.

The original campaign floundered despite a high-profile launch. The campaign used 'real life' testimonies from ordinary people who had switched from PC to Mac, though they seemed alternately too cool, geeky or stoned to be believed or trusted on matters of personal computing.

A note on the Apple website currently reads: "Got an iPod, then bought a Mac? Did you love your iPod so much that you decided to buy a Mac? How did your Mac change the rest of your life? ... We want your personal story of your move to Mac - what you do with it and how it's made your life all around better."

The signs of a follow-up campaign are clear. However, this time the company will be able to take advantage of the much-vaunted iPod 'halo effect' that journalists and analysts love to harp on about.

It's a tangible effect now. According to its second quarter results, Apple shipped 1.07 million Macs - a 43 per cent increase on the same period a year ago. This rise was no doubt boosted by sales of well over five million iPods in the same three-month period - a 558 per cent increase on 2004.

Apple is clearly gearing up a campaign to beckon a few disillusioned Windows users into its open arms before Microsoft's own next-generation operating system, Longhorn, comes to town next year.

The company has already been putting the boot in. Steve Jobs previewed Tiger during last June's Worldwide Developers Conference in San Francisco. Huge banners festooned the conference call that read: "This should keep Redmond busy", "Introducing Longhorn", "Redmond, start your photocopiers" and "Redmond, we have a problem."

Last week, Philip Schiller, Apple's senior vice president of worldwide product marketing, said in a release: "Our competitors will be trying to copy Tiger's more than 200 new features and innovations for years to come."

Cupertino fancies taking yet another shot at its rival and erstwhile business partner's massive market share for operating systems.

The timing couldn't be better. Longhorn has been beset by a series of delays. A pared-back version of the OS is now slated to appear in 2006 - or 2007 at the very latest.

Meanwhile, the feel-good factor surrounding Apple is tangible at the moment. It has a strong hardware offering, including the bare-bones entry-level Mac Mini, and a mature digital lifestyle software suite in iLife 05.

In addition, Tiger has a series of rather neat features; some genuinely useful and others just crowd-pleasing eye-candy. However, the jewel in Tiger's crown is undoubtedly Spotlight - its integrated, system-wide search tool.

With our ever-expanding storage capacities and proliferating media types, many of us have accumulated gigabyte upon gigabyte of unstructured data on our hard drives. Both Apple and Microsoft have pinpointed the importance of powerful search technology built into the operating system.

The phenomenal success of search engines in recent years indicates just how comfortable and au fait users have become with search-driven methods on the internet.

Extending the search paradigm to desktop computing was the next logical step. Google has made inroads into this with its Windows-only Desktop Search tool, while Mac users have long had a similar technology available in the form of the rather nifty freeware app Quicksilver. However, by weaving Spotlight into the fabric of the operating system the technology becomes an integral part of the interface rather than an add-on.

In addition, Apple has opened the technology to third-party developers to allow the Spotlight to be supported by emerging applications via a number of APIs for configuring metadata.

At a time when search engines are king, this is a cognisant move by Apple, aligning the Mac's core ethos of usability with the technological zeitgeist.

Spotlight will find favour with those who continually fail to set themselves carefully regimented practices for folder naming and file saving despite their best intentions. However, it also allows those monkish users who do follow strict naming practices to contextualise their data in a manner that was previously only available via pricey knowledge management solutions.

In recent years Apple has become known as the company that brought you the iPod - much to the chagrin of some long-time Mac users who have supported the computer company over the last four decades.

With Spotlight and Tiger, Apple has returned to what the company used to excel at: making user-friendly computers with genuinely useful features. Irrespective of the colour of the case, the heart of the Mac has always been the software - and the operating system above all.

There's no realistic anticipation that Apple will regain huge tracts of market share. The OS wars are long over; Microsoft won.

However, the company could convince a few people outside the Apple community to consider making the leap when it launches its follow-up 'iPod to Mac' Switch campaign. Maybe not the droves that Apple might like but certainly enough to consolidate the fortunes of the company. And thanks to the strength and momentum of iPod sales, the campaign will have the added oomph and reach it lacked last time.

Let's just hope its 'real life' testimonies come from advocates who appear a little more down-to-earth this time, or at least less stoned.