You’re Apple, Inc. You have a new kick-butt file system, ZFS, that blows away Microsoft’s aging NTFS and complements see-and-gotta-have storage tools like Time Machine.

And maybe, you’d like to add the world’s Windows users to your total available market. Enabling customers to replace the creaking mass of Windows compromise with something modern. Sure, Vista looks new, but the guts are old. The NTFS file system is based on 1980’s technology from DEC, after all.

In either case you need a new file system. Changing file systems is error-prone and tedious: back up all your data, reformat the disk, install the new OS and then restore your data. Except now Apple has a better way.

A way that can change Windows file systems to Mac file systems.

According to a patent filed by smart Apple engineers Greg Marriott and David Shayer, Apple can do that. (I heard about the patent from Greg Keizer.)

The invention isn’t hard to describe. The fun is in the possible uses.