Filed under: Education
Student Mac ownership at Cornell more than tripled over 5 years
It may have slipped past last month, but Daring Fireball reminded us of September's TidBITS article about the student computing profile at Cornell University. Since 1999, Cornell has required students to report their OS when signing up for Ethernet connectivity in campus housing; prior to '99 the reporting was voluntary. Back in the early 1990s, Mac-using students made up more than a third of the self-announced connected population, but by 2000, after the start of mandatory registration, that number had dropped to only five percent of the base.Times, as they say, have changed. 2007 stats show that 21 percent of the attached student computers are running Mac OS X, a dramatic increase over the past few years. This isn't necessarily a surprise, but it's still nice to see. It also aligns with reports noted by MacRumors yesterday which show dramatic share gains for the platform at other schools, including Princeton (60 percent of on-campus sales this year are Macs), UVA (
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
iomatic said 1:32PM on 10-06-2007
"But the corporate lemmings use Windows!"
Coming from the corporate world, I have to say there's absolutely no need for Windows; that OS absolutely sucks sphincter.
The designers, engineers, programmers all use Macs. Yeah, the smart people. All the Microsoft-worshipping MBA tools use PCs, requiring an expensive, full-time IT department to run the damn things.
Mac users? On their own. Self-maintained (read: low maintenance). Low cost of ownership. My flipping Dell has so many problems, I need to wipe that crap off, and start again-- Windows apps on the Mac? pshaw, throw that garbage in Parallels and keep it away from the real OS.
Let's hope the corporate world is ready for the smarter kids.
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Christopher Belyea said 1:47PM on 10-06-2007
A quick correction: the University of Virginia (UVA) mentioned in the summary does have a significant Mac presence (20% according to the article), but the "Big Mac" installation is at Virginia Tech. Go Hoos!
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Peter said 1:51PM on 10-06-2007
I'm at Brandeis University, and from what I see, at least half, and probably closer to 60% of students are using Macs. Everything here is oriented for both Macs and PC's, and the entire school is OS X-friendly. And nobody is going to go and buy a PC after they graduate if they spent 4+ years in college on a Mac unless they have to or they have some real mental issues. Apple is taking over the future of computing from the college level and beyond.
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dappleganger said 1:53PM on 10-06-2007
Go Hokies!!!
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Leonardo Santagada said 2:05PM on 10-06-2007
I wasn't got by the ipod, I don't own one and never did, but I do have a Macbook and I use it everyday at my university in Brazil. Here ipods are a lot more expensive than macbooks (comparing to their us prices). I think there are something around 5-10% user share on the CS departament, probably a lot more at the jornalism and comunication departament but the rest of the university is mostly windows only. Ahh and there are some linux users both on CS and Physics.
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punkassjim said 2:16PM on 10-06-2007
Fake Steve Jobs posted a nice link a little while back, to this blog post. Be sure to click the two side-by-side images. Too cool:
http://duggmirror.com/apple/Look_at_them_apples/
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Josh said 2:33PM on 10-06-2007
University of Michigan new computer sales indicate that 73% of all computers purchased for this fall year (at the University store) were Mac.
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starkruzr said 2:40PM on 10-06-2007
I can confirm that there are at least as many Mac laptops visible on campus as there are PCs at the University of Notre Dame.
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Mat Lu said 2:42PM on 10-06-2007
Being a Cornell PhD, I should have posted on this! :) Anyway, my own experience at Cornell is that they still don't make their proprietary software for registration, etc. (called "Bear Access") very Mac friendly. The best that can be said for the Cornell Office of Information Technology is that they treat Mac users with a kind of benign neglect. Nonetheless, it's nice to see Mac marketshare up in Ithaca (and around academia in general).
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MrBlank said 3:42PM on 10-06-2007
"The percentage of Mac users at Cornell would be higher if certain departments didn't require Windows for their students..."
It goes both ways. Several large departments at my school require a Mac.
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Ron said 3:47PM on 10-06-2007
Why does everyone attribute better Mac sales to the iPod?
Maybe it's the fact that the Mac can now run virtually every major operating system?
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Dan said 3:51PM on 10-06-2007
"It goes both ways. Several large departments at my school require a Mac."
At Cornell, I'm not aware of any department that requires a Mac, while quite a few require PCs for proprietary software. (Especially in the Engineering and Hotel schools)
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a ham sandwich said 4:25PM on 10-06-2007
i got to the university of michigan, and from what ive seen the mac/pc ratio is at LEAST 1:1. however the general rule of thumb seems to be that if you own a mac, it GOES TO CLASS. it seems that i ONLY see macs in classrooms. no pc's at all. i guess macs are smarter?
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mitchell.flax said 4:36PM on 10-06-2007
Windows is far from dead, but the Mac contingent is growing like crazy. It's roughly 50/50 at Columbia. It seems like Windows is the preference of grad students, particularly engineers, while Mac is the favorite of practically every incoming freshman in the undergraduate schools. Of course, those grad students' computers look like they come from the era of the decidedly unprofessional-looking colored iBooks, so I'm glad that Apple finally figured out how to strike the balance between cool design and business design.
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geochick said 4:42PM on 10-06-2007
Go Big Red! Its nice to see my alma mater on TUAW also nice to hear that the Mac usage have gone up since I graduated. I like going up to the Mac store now and again to check out the new Apple wares only wish that it was bigger and that some of the sales rep knew what they were talking about. Yeah the Macs stand out in the bookstore big time which is probably contributing to the increase in usage other than the regular adverts and general Apple buzz...
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Fritz Laurel said 5:36PM on 10-06-2007
Like #3 said -- just to be clear, "Big Mac" is at Va Tech, not UVA.
Cheers,
FL
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dave said 5:47PM on 10-06-2007
Last I heard, Mac Book Pros are a REQURIED purchase for the Park School of Communications at Ithaca College (my alma mater), right next door to Cornell.
While I think requiring students to pay for _anything_ substantial beyond tuition is ridiculous, it is telling that one of the top comm schools in the nation is a Mac school (and has been for awhile!).
Also - if there was a GIS system that ran on the Mac, you'd see far more of them being used by Rutgers Urban Planning students.
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lee said 6:22PM on 10-06-2007
Yeah - It's VA Tech that had the XServe cluster. UVA just has a bunch of old 386s on top of empty Zima boxes.
*Hokies for life*
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Steve Pearson said 8:39PM on 10-06-2007
None of the departments at Cornell require windows, not even the engineering school. Sure, if your in ECE it might help I'm a freshman in ChemE at Cornell and a lot of my engineering professors use macs.
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Dan said 10:28PM on 10-06-2007
Hotel School strongly advises against getting a Mac because of certain software. Same thing for Johnson School. Engineering recommends PC over Mac, see http://www.engineering.cornell.edu/student-services/academic-advising/orientation/computer.cfm.
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