I love this photo…
Unless you’ve been walking around with your fingers in your ears and loudly singing “lalalala!” it’s been hard to avoid noticing Apple’s amazing renaissance. Not so many years ago it was hard to imagine that Apple had any real long term future at all, but things have certainly turned around since Steve came back. Apple’s growth is quite phenomenal at the moment. It’s hard to know exactly why this is happening, but it undeniably is.
Whether you attribute it to the iPod’s viral “halo effect“, the effective and very funny “I’m a Mac, I’m a PC” advertisements, the sheer style and beauty of the new Macs, the frenzy that was whipped up by the release of the iPhone, the drawcard success of Leopard, or just the exodus away from Windows following the disaster of Vista, there is no denying that the Mac platform is enjoying enormous growth at the moment. Recent statistics claim that Mac sales are growing at four times the computer industry average. (Dell is the market leader, but currently has a negative growth rate…)
And the place where Apple seems be gaining the most traction is in education. With such a strong focus of the use of digital media like video, audio, graphics and podcasting, many schools are seeing that the Mac makes a lot of sense. Add the fact that viruses, malware and other nasties are virtually non-existent for Mac users, it’s built on an industrial strength operating system is stable, fast and easy to use and intuitive, and there are some pretty compelling arguments to switch over from the dark side of Windows.
Spot the PC by Chris Betcher is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
I love that picture! I have a friend at school who keeps asking me about getting a new laptop for home–we are in a school that uses PCs. My district before this year was strictly PC, but just this year began allowing teachers in the district laptop program (a laptop for the teacher) to opt for a MAC. I told him if I were getting a new one Id definitely go MAC, primarily b/c vista has issues and the newer Office program coming on PCs is not necessarily compatible w/ school Office. Of course that could be true with MAC if he gets a new one, but MAC will not have the issues that Vista is causing. I also had him reflect on our newest batch of computers just installed in the school labs–Vista had already been out, but amazingly our newest workstations came ready and equipped with XP (even though the sticker on the outside says Vista…) Our district is not even willing to fight the Vista problems yet. Speaks volumes all by itself. when the IT avoid it, then its a good sign the novice user should too. I think he is going to get a MAC. He asked me to bring my MacBookPro to school, and I did on the last school days before the break, I could tell it was love at first sight.
I started using the Mac again six years ago when I arrived at my current school. As each year passes, I find the projects that I am creating would have been so much more difficult in a Windows environment. This past month, I got an iMac for home. I love the ease of creating digital media with the Mac. It doesn’t matter if it’s audio, video, art — it’s just easier than the XP machine I have at home, too. Add to all this the fact that I’ve never had a virus problem at school. My principal talks about going to Windows on occasion. I’ve told her that she’ll have to make the switch with a different computer teacher. I truly fee that strongly about it.