I started doing this because none of the sales associates could ever answer any questions about Apple products and I could, said WilliamLH (http://www.mymac2u.com/), one of the guys in aisle six. Why did I do this, with no pay, no outright reward? Because that is the type of people Mac users are. It is a passion, an obsession, a religion if you will. WilliamLH started visiting stores when he was out anyway, he said, but eventually he went every weekend when he had free time.

Occasionally, extra-zealous Mac fans would sabotage Windows PCs at stores, though it was more common to rearrange a magazine stand so that Mac magazines obscured the Windows ones.

The army of volunteer salespeople worked so well, Apple eventually co-opted the idea, first with Demo Daysone-off sales events coinciding with big shopping days or product launchesand then with a longer-term program overseen by MarketSource, a marketing firm.

Dan Oblak (http://macbigot.com/) became a Demo Day volunteerpaid $75 a dayand then an Apple Power Rep, which was more of a part-time job. As a Power Rep, Oblak spent about 10 hours a week, on top of his day job, supporting the staff at five local Circuit City stores. These are usually not people who spend every waking hour reading about and discussing the Mac, he said. But I do; and the exposure Ive had to the questions and concerns of the potential Mac customer is a tool that these stores can take advantage of.

Oblak was responsible for making sure all the Macs were running, the display area was neat and tidy, and all the signage was present and correct. On top of this, he put together a weekly Mac newsletter (http://homepage.mac.com/jdoblak/) for the sales staff and often made himself available throughout the week for advice. He didnt do any selling directly, although he often talked to potential customers.

My wife is a Mac widow, he said. Its a challenge. Many of these salespeople are a bit green, and there is high turnover in any retail environment, but little victories here and there make it all worthwhile.”

SOME OF THE GUYS IN AISLE SIX

A lot of men get dragged to the mall on weekends to go shopping with their wives. But for Eddie Clipper, the opposite was true. Hed drag his wife to the mall, but not to go shoppingto voluntarily help sell Macs. Many weekends Clipper would go to the mall or a local computer superstore to fix up the Macs on display and persuade customers to buy them. My wife knows that if we stop in the computer department, I will be talking to people for a while, he said. She usually goes elsewhere in the store and drags me away later.

K. Jerry Smith was the same. Every month or so, hed take his son to a local Sears or Circuit City, and theyd spend the day fixing up the Macs. My son and I, like so many other Macheads, have always cleaned up the Macs on display at stores that could care less whether they were properly displayedusually major retailers, he said. To this day, one can almost always find Macs with frozen systems after the kids of busy shoppers have banged on the keyboards. We restart and repair whatever damage has been done. We want them to look and operate at their best.

Jeff Sepeta is another who acted as a voluntary salesperson. Although youre not supposed to solicit business inside CompUSA, I have often caught sales reps saying bad things about the Mac to people who are clearly interested in buying one, he said. I generally step in, explain why the Mac is better than the sales rep would admit, and generally make the sales guy look like cow pie.

Clipper, Smith, and Sepeta, and dozens of others like them, perhaps hundreds, were doing their bit to help Apple in its darkest days. In the late 1990s, Apples showing at retail stores was below par: indifferent staff at computer stores often relegated Macs to the quietest aisle. Machines were left turned off or were badly neglected, and stocks of Mac software were often out.

Without the resources to tackle every store, Apples chief evangelist, Guy Kawasaki, urged Mac fans to rectify the miasma through his popular Mac EvangeList mailing list. Kawasaki suggested subscribers tidy up displays, buttonhole salespeople, and counter pro-Windows sales patter. It worked pretty well. For a while, many of the thousands of stores selling Macs were visited by well-intentioned Mac enthusiasts. Collectively, the volunteers came to be known as the guy in aisle six.