Mac users quadruple on Princeton campus

Good, it's about time -- a reversal of a 10-year collegaite trend toward Windows that I hope will come to be seen as a historical aberration.

From the early '80s through the creation of Windown 95, Apple owned the campus market. Then (like everything else about Apple in the mid-late '90s), they screwed the pooch and lost one of their most loyal constituencies. It feels like now, in the late '00s, it's coming back to Apple, and the '95-'05/06 period will look like a fluke.

I know Apple's market share will long be a minority, given the penetration of Windows in businesses; but the education market should be a gimme for them.

Do the students at Princeton have more money than the typical students at other colleges? If they do, maybe that's why more Macs are being sold there. Students on limited budgets would probably go for less expensive non-Mac computers. I'd go for a Mac since it can run both OSX and Windows. But when I was ready for college my parents would have got me something cheap since they would be more interesting in saving money.

At cornell, its the same thing.. it's hard to find a PC anymore. Well, ok, not quite, but it's at least 50% macs now.

As we see college students changing the trend, look to see them as working adults and then parents (with children) having more macs too. I've been to a lot of state university campuses, and they always seem to have the highest concentration of Macs, esp. portables, when it comes to usage in public places.

Now it's just a question of getting employers to go along with employee preferences. I myself graduated in May and all but one machine in our large company is an IBM. The one being a G4 tower our one full-time rendering guy used for his work. Of course, my Powerbook goes with me for my personal use, so you can count another. Still though, it is going to be quite hard to get large companies to rethink their network preferences, thanks to software needs and IT departments' MS only training. Our company is locked into the Autodesk (MS of the CAD world for you laymen) system, which only writes for PC. There have been hopes that Autodesk would support Mac now that they use Intel procs, but any verification rumors have yet to be seen.

Then there are the older employees to consider. I'd say the place where I work (which employs hundreds of people, easily) has a ration of around 50% 40-55, 20% 56+, 15% 30-39, and 5% 22-29. Not to say this is normal, (actually a little skewed) but it goes to show that there are still a lot of people who are barely able to use the computer and one central appllication, much less understand enough to be able to hop on an entirely new OS. Then don't forget, these people are the first to complain when something doesn't work the way they're used to and get nostalgic about the way it used to be. I see this just with a difference between ppl use to using AutoCAD 14 (yes, that is still around) and the rest using ADT 2007. These types of people are slow to learn, quick to experiment, and even quicker to give up and ask to be led by the hand. I wouldn't see an easy transition, esp. if they are predisposed to dislike Macs (I know plenty of those too).

Mac usage as a rising demographic is a definitely possibility, but I've got to figure it's going to be a personal use majority, until we get IT and purchasing agents to wise up.

Your thoughts?

I wish we had Macs at skool when i was a nipper.

But we had Lynx computers and the old BBC computer (yes made by the BBC TV company) :-(

I wish we had COMPUTERS at school when I was a nipper. Whippersnappers. You don't remember a time when only colleges had computers, and those were mainframes and minis hooked up to monochrome, text-only dumb terminals, sometimes not even video terminals but printers, so you could only play Star or Dungeo while generating reams of printouts. None of this broadband in the dorm rooms they have today.

I wish we had ballpoint pens when I was a nipper. Ink wells were such a pain.

Ink wells? You didn't know you were born laddy. When I were a nipper we had to get up half an hour before we went to bed, eat a breakfast of broken glass and those of us that were lucky enough to go to school had to write their work in blood from their own fingers. Those that were lucky enough to have fingers. And blood.

me write with burnt stick on cave wall.

but me think college students using macs means they will be longtime mac users, as will their offspring, which will help boost the overall mac segment. yabadabadoo.