On Black Friday, the biggest shopping day of the year, PBCentral.com endeavored to find some answers on what people were shopping for in the realm of Mac this holiday season. We were also trying to find out some other answers, one of those being whether Apple was trying to push iPod sales hoping to cash in on the "halo effect."

Of course, we know now that Apple couldn't have been doing that--pushing iPod sales in order to pull in Mac hardware sales--since they're trying to research if that magical effect actually exists.

The iPod, mystique. (Our apologies to fellow columnist Charles W. Moore).

Apparently, the big red fruit doesn't believe in the man in the big red suit... even if he's been bringing them lots of gifts lately.

What we hadn't planned on getting during our little outing on that Friday night was an analysis of this iPod "halo effect" from a married couple that we interviewed on their take of the holiday shopping season for Apple in general.

From that interview, (which we classify as highly credible, but due to an agreement before the interview, we promised not to be very detailed about the married couple's background) our original story idea branched out into a backstory--this one--a second angle that came as a result of trying to find out what people were buying from the realm of Mac this holiday season.
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Their conversation made us start to believe in the unseen all over again... like Santa Claus. (Though we never said anywhere in this story that we didn't believe in Santa Claus in the first place!).

Back in October, in an opinion piece entitled "A Shift in Newton's Law," we discussed the growth of Apple and how PC users were finally seeing the light of day. We also mentioned this "halo effect" of the iPod and disregarded it as pure myth, saying that the average PC user wouldn't switch over to the Mac purely because of their experience with the iPod.

Certainly, there had to be a number of other factors involved with making the switch.

Even Dennis Sellers of MacsimumNews.com seems to agree when he wrote on 11/29--three business days after Black Friday--that, "Common sense tells me that if a company makes one product you really like, you're more likely to buy another product from said company..."

Sellers went on to say, "But if you buy an iPod and fall in love with it, will you instinctively consider a Mac in your next computer-buying equation? That's less certain."

MacNewsWorld.com reported just yesterday that, "Apple's Mac sales growth is enormously greater than PC sales growth as the end of 2006 approaches. However, the causes are not clear."

Nowhere do they mention the iPod and its "halo effect" instead attributing it to other possible factors such as, "The visibility of Apple's 'Get a Mac' TV ads and Microsoft's security woes with Windows..."

Back to our backstory, our interview with this married couple.

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