Hey Hey,

I have to disagree... I don't think Macs are declining at all.

People look at Macs and their views and judgement are clouded. In the last two years we've implemented a couple of programs which require students to have Macs.... sitting in our vault you'll find quite a few G4 laptops. The students love them and many have purchased their own Macs... several students in PC programs have requested a Mac.. but we've never had a students in a Mac program request a PC.

If there was more of the correct type of marketing the Mac market would take off.... There are a few general misconceptions that exist that are hindering the world of Mac.

1) This is a common misconception that AMD finally managed to overcome... Mac now has to do the same... People are convinced that all processors are equal and that 1Mhz is 1Mhz regardless of anything else... and that it is directly comparable to any other processor... We've also benchmarking that will match an AMD with a lower speed to a faster Intel processor... We've also seen that Celeron and P4 processors can have the same speed, yet much different performance levels.. this is the same with Mac VS PC and most people still don't realize this. I have a buddy who (until he recieved an AMD Athlon64 for christmas) had two computers.. a 900Mhz PC and a 450Mhz Mac... The 450Mhz Mac would out perform the PC time and time again. People need to realize that PCs are like sex... Size/Speed doesn't always matter

2) When you purchase a Mac you are stuck with the hardware it comes with. This is false... but still commonly accepted. Everything thinks that Mac hardware is entirely proprietary and that you can never upgrade... This is a huge misconception and this scares many people away from the Mac environment.

3) The OS... Mac OS X is an amazing innovation and a hell of an operating system.... In my opinion (and I use primarly MS and *nix products) it completely blows away the competition. I think that right now it's the holy grail of operating systems. I've actually toyed with idea of tweaking my laptop to run a barebones copy of XP embedded with PearPC running MacOS X just because it is a very very nice OS...

Macs need more advertising and more opportunity for the public to play with them... My first Mac experience was with an Apple II and after that it was several years later on an older Mac running Mac OS 8 (give or take).... Then these G3 and G4s with Mac OS 9 and Mac OS X... and it's leaps and bounds above what it originally was... however most people I know rely on those Apple II experiences that they had because they have no where to go to use a Mac... In our college we have several Mac labs and they are always full.. it's nice to see students experimenting with it... however until places like Futureshop, Best Buy, Staples, etc stock Macs they really don't stand a chance.... Very few people will go to a Mac only store (which you have to do here) when computer shopping....

Anyways the Mac isn't dying... it's slowly building up steam... give it a few years... and you'll see the big name stores stocking them and selling them.. and then you'll see a huge jump in usage on the internet.

Anyways.. that's my opinion.

Peace,
HT