Hey, speaking of Santa (we did mention him, it's a valid segue!), you do realize that we're barrelling towards the thick of the holiday shopping season at enormous velocity, right? Oh, sure, some of you may think that early November is far too early to start worrying about Christmas shopping and the like, and believe us, speaking as people who have in the past done all their gift-buying at The Alley on Christmas Day, we can relate. But given the fact that we recall spotting Christmas gear at the mall in September-- just a week or two before we unstrung last year's lights from the AtAT compound bushes, in fact-- clearly 'tis the season, at least from a purely capitalist standpoint. So it's time to think about running up some serious debt in the name of peace on earth and goodwill toward men.

But if you're at a loss as to what to buy for your Mac-loving friends and family, fret not; Apple's lending a helping hand by publishing its annual Holiday Gift Guide, which suggests plenty of presents chock full of spendy goodness and conveniently helps you blow all kinds of crazy money at the online Apple Store. Just to get a sense of the mood over there, consider that the absolute cheapest thing in Apple list of "Top Ten Gifts" is a $99.95 .Mac subscription. Economy, Shmeconomy-- it's the holidays, dagnabbit!

For what it's worth, though, our own personal favorite Gift Guide item is the newly-released Move2Mac by Detto Technologies. Have you heard about this yet? It's a $59.95 software package that comes with a specialized USB file transfer cable, and it's all designed to pull files and settings from a soon-to-be-junked Windows PC into a new Mac running Mac OS X 10.2. The idea is that you can bring home your new iMac, plug it into your old Dell, click a few buttons, and whammo-- soon the iMac has all your files, your Internet settings, a Mail application configured for your existing account, etc. (Personally, we think Apple should bundle a free copy with every Mac sold to Wintel users, because we suspect the lure of a free and easy migration tool might get a lot of potential switchers off the fence-- but we digress.)

And why do we like the idea of Move2Mac as a gift so much, aside from the fact that it sounds like a perfectly nifty product in its own right? Simple: every Mac user has at least one person on his or her list that uses that "other" platform-- the market share stats make it sort of hard to avoid. Well, is there anything more fun than a gift that's perfectly useless unless the recipient shells out another grand or two to use it? So you just give your Wintel-using friend a copy of Move2Mac, secure in the knowledge that he'll rush right out and buy a new iMac just so's not to waste your thoughtful gift. It's a foolproof plan to boost the Switcher population!

Or, uh, he'll return it and put the credit toward a Microsoft wireless mouse. Whatever. Still, it's worth a shot, right?