Thinking further about the new Mac ads — and how if I were considering buying a Mac over a PC they wouldn’t sway me — I came across this post about an accidental switch & bait that turned one PC person, political-science professor Harry Farrell, into a Mac user:
“I was working in my office, when a work-study knocked on my door with a brand new MacBook Pro, which he told me had been sent over from my school’s technology program. I was nonplussed, and told him that he must be wrong, that I hadn’t ordered one etc…
So I finally acquiesced, on the grounds of gift-horses, and the wisdom of not inquiring too closely into the dental conditions thereof, and unpacked it. Two hours later, I was completely hooked –œ more rational and altogether nicer than my Windows box, while much smoother than my Ubuntu installation. I would have wanted to take it home and marry it, if I wasn’t married already. Three hours later, I discovered it had been a mistake, and that it was in fact intended for a colleague with a vaguely similar name… And I had to give it back.”
Farrell says he tried proposing the scheme to Apple, to no avail. Kind of a shame, my guess is that if you had a loaner (“mistake”) computer, you’d have hard time giving it up.
Via Crooked Timber
Image used with a CC license, thanks to speedesign
