Look out, people-- there's another one of those market research reports flying around overhead. You know these things; every so often they come swooping down from out of the wild blue yonder, revealing some surprising facet of knowledge about... well, about anything, really, but of course, being the single-minded and obsessive folks we are, if it doesn't relate in some way to Apple, it might as well be invisible. But when an Apple-related one of these things shows up, it's time to bask in the glory of its imparted knowledge, because it usually means that some people you've never heard of are making sweeping generalizations because they think they know so much more than you do. And that's always fun, right?

So here's the latest: MacNewsWorld discusses a new report from some firm called TechnoMetrica Market Intelligence which reveals that "as many as 50 percent of PC buyers who considered a Mac over the last 12 months actually ended up purchasing one," which is, of course, fantastic news, until you consider that no fewer than 50 percent actually ended up not. So who are these prospective Mac buyers who wind up getting Wintels instead? Well, according to TechnoMetrica, they're people who hear that Apple makes great computers, but who are "unaware of what an Apple actually is. Once they find out, many of them end up buying a Dell."

What, exactly, do you suppose they mean by "what an Apple actually is"? Because now we're picturing these shoppers saying, "oh, wait-- the Mac is a good computer? Never mind; we wanted a soulless, virus-riddled hunk of assembled parts that'll suck the very humanity from our marrow at an alarming rate. But thanks anyway."

The study also claims that, "although Apple sold 900,000 computers over the length of the study, it could have potentially sold 800,000 more during that time period." How? Well, TechnoMetrica notes that an irksome "38 percent of those surveyed cited price as their number-one driving factor" in deciding which computer to buy. (Philistines! Filthy heathens! What? Oh. Sorry, don't mind us.) In other words, they don't care that a $799 eMac includes functionality-- we're thinking specifically of all the iLife apps, here-- that they'd need to spend hundreds of dollars to add to that $399.99-after-rebate eMachines box (monitor sold separately), or that they'll save hours of time and bucketfuls of tears by getting a computer that actually works. In other other words, Apple could theoretically almost double its market share by shipping a displayless cheapMac with as much class, quality, and joy of use ripped out of it as necessary to bring the price down to the $400 level of the bottom-tier Dell and eMachines offerings.

To which we can only say, "duh."

This isn't news, but is a number that sheds a little more light on a long-raging debate: for years, the pro-cheapMac lobby has steadfastly maintained that shipping a stripped-down Mac for under $500 is an essential step to building market share, and the TechnoMetrica survey certainly seems to back that up. The anti-cheapMac arguments generally run along the lines of "getting a Mac down to that price range would necessitate removing too much of the quality and feature set that makes a Mac a Mac, and then we start getting into the Amelio strategy of trying to increase sales to the Wintel crowd by making Macs as much like Wintels as possible." Meaning, what profiteth Apple if it gains the whole world and loses its soul?

So the bottom line becomes, is it worthwhile for Apple to risk the Mac's reputation as a seamless "it just works" user experience in order to sell twice as many units at a reduced margin, merely to expand the user base to include people who don't see the extra value in a $799 eMac in the first place?

This is more of a question for the rest of us than for Apple, because if it thought the answer was "yes," it probably would have shipped cheapMacs years ago. Personally, while the idea of someone hooking up a new $499 Mac to some crappy old phosphor-burned 14-inch monitor just to save a few hundred bucks sets our teeth on edge, we think the market share increase might be worth the aesthetic affront to all that's good and decent. In particular, we bet that Apple could increase its education sales in a big way if schools knew that they could (shudder) reuse those skanky old VGA monitors, and there's a fair chance that students might gain a lifelong appreciation for the Mac's user interface-- even if they do only get to see it on a small screen that tinges everything green and has a mysterious dark patch spreading across its left side.

Heck, if nothing else, it'd be fun to see a cheapMac shake things up a little. But we doubt Apple agrees.