Say, do you remember early on in the iPod Era when part of Apple's strategy with the lil' white doohickey was to sell a portable music player so amazing that Windows people would actually toss their Wintels and buy Macs just so they could use the iPod? And remember when Steve admitted just a month and a half ago that Apple had abandoned that strategy, instead choosing to make the iPod Windows-compatible so the company could sell a gazillion more of them? Even so, you've probably run across a lot of talk about a potential "halo effect"-- meaning that, even though people no longer have to use a Mac to use an iPod, when they see just how elegant, easy-to-use, and headache-free the iPod-plus-iTunes experience is, when the time comes to buy a new system to replace that aging Wintel, they'll be a lot more inclined to check out those computers made by "those geniuses behind the iPod" or whatever.

Well, as it turns out, that strategy may be working. BusinessWeek reports that "evidence is starting to mount that Apple is positioned to pick up some PC share with consumers." Some outfit called the Technometrica Institute of Policy and Politics just surveyed "likely home PC buyers" and apparently a whopping 8% of those polled claimed that "they intended to buy an Apple." And while 8% may not sound like much, it sounds like freakin' Christmas compared to Apple's current market share of 3.7%. Better still, it's second only to Dell's "intend to buy" numbers, which is a respectable silver medal finish compared to last quarter's actual Mac sales having wedged the company into a lackluster fifth place position. And the 8% is "up from 5% in May."

The article credits the combination of the iPod experience and the accessibility of Apple's own low-pressure try-before-you-buy retail stores as the one-two punch that may boost the Mac's market share in coming quarters, and you have to admit that anyone walking in to check out an iPod is going to have to take at least a glance or two at that shiny new Mac it just happens to be plugged into. Once that happens, the seed's been planted; if the customer leaves the store with an iPod (as so many of them do), there's an association growing in the back of his head between the iPod and the Mac. Any growing love for the iPod will subconsciously transfer to a growing openness to the Mac platform. And when it's finally time to go shopping for a new computer, why not stop back at that Apple store and see what it has to offer?

Personally, we suspect that there's another sneaky little side to this whole dynamic: the iPod is exposing millions of high tech and digital lifestyle consumers to the apparently foreign concept that "you get what you pay for" and that buying the cheapest product isn't always the way to go. Think about it for a second: it's a little less scary spending a price premium on a $300-class product like an iPod than on a bigger-ticket item like a whole new computer. But once they've forked over the extra dough to get an iPod instead of, say, one of those Dell DJ thingies, those customers are going to recognize on some level that while they paid more for an iPod, they got more in return. Will that concept stick with them when they're shopping for new computers, too? Well, assuming that Technometrica's survey results aren't completely out of whack, maybe so.

Of course, Steve Jobs insists that none of this is the result of deliberate strategy; when asked recently whether he thought the iPod might still attract Wintel users to the Mac platform, his answer was an explicit "no." But if it comes to pass, somehow we don't think he'll mind.