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.