Wednesday, August 11, 2010

The big Mac attack


You know, it's said that if you hold on to something long enough, it will come back into style.

World, meet my ubercool, old-school Mac.

This is it in the bottom of the basement closet, where it's been sitting for years. In fact, the 1993-vintage Performa 450, with a whopping 32 MB of RAM and a massive 120 MB hard drive, hasn't been hooked up and turned on in eight or nine years.

Ever since we got . . .
ahem . . . a Windows machine.

Mac didn't mind, however. It was in the closet plotting world domination. And, lo, it might just happen.

When nobody was looking -- or at least looking at iPhones, iPods and iPads -- the cool but hopelessly niche Macintosh computer was getting popular.
Really popular.

And now people are saying Microsoft may be in trouble.


IT STARTED with this little article in The Washington Post:
Shares of Microsoft Corp. edged lower Wednesday after Global Equities Research analyst Trip Chowdhry downgraded the software giant in part due to increased competition from Apple's Macs to its Windows operating system.

THE SPARK: Chowdhry, who downgraded Microsoft to "Equal Weight" from "Overweight," said in a note to investors he does not expect the company to see any upside to his estimates for the next 12 to 18 months.

Increasingly, companies are giving their employees a choice to either use Microsoft Windows PCs or Apple Inc.'s Macs, the analyst said. And, increasingly, employees are choosing Mac over Windows. To boot, Chowdhry said 70 percent of college freshman are entering school with Macs, up about 10 percent to 15 percent from a year ago.
AND THAT got picked up by the tech media. The Mac blog OSXDaily was downright giddy:

I hope the raw statistics and research data is released so we can get the precise details, but speaking from experience I can definitely say that Macs and Apple hardware are overwhelming college campuses. Sure you’ll see other computers and electronics around too but a clear majority of people are using at least one of Apple’s signature products, whether it’s a Mac, iPhone, iPod, or iPad.

So Apple is pretty much taking over, dominating college campuses, the USA, and reaching to the highest levels of power with President Obama and the White House staff all using Macs and iPads. Amazing.

THEN TOD MAFFIN, lecturing at the British Columbia Institute of Technology, decided to do his own college computer survey. He asked the students to hold up their MacBooks. The lecture hall was awash with glowing Apple logos.

He then asked the students to hold up their PCs. One student held up a lonely Windows machine.


SENSING the time was ripe, I dug the old Mac out and set it up. After nearly a decade in the closet, would it work? Could it work?


IT WORKED. Started right up. Now we're partying like it's 1995.

I think my next computer is going to be a Mac.

Again.

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