Apple's Mac makes monster gains at university

Here at the University of

Here at the University of Michigan the percentage of students that use Macs appears in the 40-50% range. Not to mention the University desktops are over 60/40 Mac.

Well, my undergrad at

Well, my undergrad at Occidental never had any macs, to find them you'd have to enter a prof's office or maybe the extra private teacher only computer labs, and even then there were only two. However just go 10 miles to a nearby state college and you'll find mac lab after mac lab, mainly just for art and music students, however with the number of computer labs they do have that is a very impressive percentage of macs on campus.

I know multiple parents

I know multiple parents including my own that recently bought new computers and switched to Macs because of their children. I for one put my foot down. I was tired of fixing the PC for them all the time. They could have switched sooner but my mom's company had Windows only software which was recently replaced with a web based application. So when they decided to upgrade recently, I told them if they bought a new PC they were on their own - thus they are now iMac users. Dad grumbles a little bit, but mom is adjusting ok. I am sending them to a free class at CompUSA put on by the Apple rep and that should help a great deal. I also recently helped the mother of another young lady I grew up with set up her new MacBook (she told her mom what to get). I am nearing 30 and my parents are around 60 so it just goes to show that you can teach an old dog new tricks.

This is all entirely

This is all entirely consistent with my experience.

Since the switch to OS X, Macs have been on an exponential growth curve within academia.

At a scientific meeting I attended last month, the proportion of Macs was nearing 0.9, whereas, at the same meeting 3 years ago this proportion was less than 0.2. Similarly, among students at my university and many others that I've visited recently, Macs are not only common, they're becoming dominant.

Software developers and Web designers need to take this into consideration. Obviously, Microsoft and PC hardware vendors also need to take this into consideration, but I'm not sure there's much the can do about it now. The tide has turned.

Cheers

The computer market is like

The computer market is like the tire market. You could say cars account for less tire sales than bicycles. Who cares?

Market share in terms of $$ is a more interesting statistic.

At the American Geophysical

At the American Geophysical Union meeting in San Francisco last December, I noted that almost every single computer was a Macintosh. 13,000 PHD scientists in attendance.

I have 2 nieces in

I have 2 nieces in University currently and the interest in Macs is quite large among those still using PCs. They tell me they get asked about their laptops every day and more than a few offers to buy their computers when they upgrade. The traffic in the local Apple Store is also very heavy with the 18-25 YO crowd in a city with a bunch of schools. I think that things may have reached a tipping point with the generation coming of age.

Re: Anonymous troll — it

Re: Anonymous troll — it figures that a coward would not be willing to post under his or her own name, since you clearly have an excellent grasp of reality (not!). Recent internal Google research shows that Windows is massively vulnerable to infection just by visiting maliciously crafted websites, even if you're behind a NAT firewall. See

Researchers from Google surveyed billions of sites and subjected 4.5 million pages to an 'in-depth analysis', report the BBC. 10% of these sites - 450,000 - were capable of launching 'drive bys' - merely visiting these sites infects Windows computers. And a further 700,000 sites contained code that could in other ways compromise Windows machines.

do they still make macs? I

do they still make macs? I thought they went out with the amiga.

A survey of 386 high school

A survey of 386 high school seniors from our all-Windows school district showed 95% of students will be attending college this fall. 93% said they plan on getting a new laptop computer. Of those getting a new computer, 58% plan on getting a Mac. The next largest group, 26%, were undecided on what platform they would be getting. The rest were getting Windows computers.

It does not look too good for Windows. Quite interesting since this class started school right after the district went 100% Windows. So they have been using Windows for their entire K-12 experience.