Mac usage surges amongst University of Virginia freshmen since 2004

I provide departmental computer support at UVa and formerly worked for ITC. In order to connect to UVa's network, you have to register your network card, giving ITC your UVa-provided e-mail ID and your network card's MAC address, so they can track down ownership of any computer disrupting the network. The ID tells them whether you are a student or not, and which class you are in. The MAC address tells them whether you have a Mac or a PC. They can get very accurate information even without a human-administered survey.

The University-encouraged Desktop Computing Initiative (DCI) program offers Dells and Macs with 4-year warranties. Students get well-chosen machines with a good software bundle and a great warranty for a fair price. The University gets to limit the otherwise overwhelming variety of hardware and software we have to support. Dell and Apple get to sell a bunch of computers in one big batch. It's a good deal for everyone involved.

This year, the functionally equivalent models of Dell and Apple computers are interesting in that the Macs are slightly cheaper than the equivalent Dells. PCs are often cheaper than Macs because they low-ball the hardware beyond the threshold Apple is willing to cross. Pick out similar processors, hard drives and RAM, and PCs aren't cheaper anymore.

I've worked with PCs since 1987. I started working with Macs in 2001. They slowly won me over. When OS X 10.4 came out, I lost any preference between a Mac and a PC. I began to prefer Macs with 10.5. Version 10.6 turned me into the kind of Mac bigot I hated in the 1990s.

As a support person for both platforms, it also impresses me that old PCs are a lot slower than their age-equivalent Macs, unless you wipe the hard drive and reinstall everything. PCs get dragged down by the burden of all the software loaded into background over time, to a much greater degree than Macs, and by the load of modifications to the OS that application installations create in Windows.

I'm quite willing to shift back again, if Microsoft and their ilk can begin to produce a competitive product. If they could isolate their applications from the OS like Apple does (probably the greatest single reason Macs are less vulnerable to malware), and if they had an equivalent to Time Machine and a hardware equivalent to Time Capsule, and if they had an equivalent restore process to the Mac's "Archive and Restore" which makes rebuilding corrupted OS dramatically easier, and if they had Target Mode so I didn't have to pull the drive to copy files off of it, and if Outlook were to become as good as iCal and Mail, and if there were a functional equivalent to iPhoto, etc., etc., etc., then I could go back to liking PCs as much as Macs.

In 1987, DOS had problems with malware; mostly boot-strap viruses written by 16 year old kids, distributed via diskettes. I've never known a Microsoft OS that didn't have malware problems. Macs are not invulnerable, but the stark contrast in malware vulnerability throughout the past 20+ years is impressive. It's time people paid attention to that.

For the past several years, everything Apple has done has been done well. PCs have, for the most part, coasted along on the momentum they had back in the 1990s. In terms of innovation and quality, Microsoft and their friends haven't come up with much in a while. So far as I can tell, they survive because they are "too big to fail".

Of course, that was also once true of IBM, who once had the biggest share of PC sales.

The thing that concerns me is that Apple may eventually evolve into another Microsoft, too big to fail (or to innovate). If that happens, where will the next Apple come from?

Meanwhile, I'm not going to disrespect Apple's current offerings by fretting too much about the future. I'm writing this while in a waiting stage, rebuilding yet another Windows machine after a rootkit I couldn't clean up after a wasting a couple hours of using every tool I could find to fight it.

Each building that houses freshman had one or two computer advisors. The computer advisors went door-to-door asking each person what computer they had, and the attributes of it. If the person was unsure, the CA would check for the person. The results from this survey are very accurate. I was one of these computer advisors, and I really sad to see the program go. But, costs are costs.

I go to UVa (upcoming 2nd year) and this statistic doesn't surprise me at all. And how they most likely obtained the data is because all students have to register their device with the university (via some UVa software, which is a pain) to use the campus (well, "grouds") internet/network. The majority of Mac users are actually from the college of arts and science (erm, well, arts and crafts as we engineering students like to call it). You won't find many e-schoolers with Macs. Architecture students probably make up the rest of the Mac-using population, but there aren't too many a-schoolers to begin with. Nonetheless, interesting article (for a UVa student at least).

Surely the introduction of iTunes on Windows would *reduce* the number of new people using Macs - they can buy a cheaper machine and still have integration with their iPods?

As others have said, the Intel switch could well lead the charge as Macs were suddenly seen to be "on par" with PCs in terms of performance (whatever the realities of the speed difference between Intel and PowerPC architecture really are).

Ha! I was one of those 4% back in 2003... I like to think the steady increase is a direct result of me.

Huh.

Think this might have something to do with the price of Macs steadily decreasing over the last few years since the switch to Intel processors more then anything else?

I own several Macs, both for my business and family. I could care less about aesthetic appeal of Macs, I only like Snow Leopard, what I would have really liked was to be able to buy any computer and install Snow Leopard on it. I have used Next Operating System in the 90s, which was built on UNIX and I know that OSX is built on Next, no wonder it is so robust of an operating, its a shame that APPLE is so greedy and Steve Jobs is such a control freak. Keep up the fight Psystar

I go to UVA. There are first year dorms and they checked the usage of Macs in those dorms. I have seen Mac usage steadily increase the past 3 years, mainly from how many are used in my classes.
However, UVA got rid of CA's this year and outsourced the help to a "help-line".

How would the IT department necessarily know 43% of freshman were using Macs? Even if they were measuring the number of Macs in their environment, how would they know they belonged to freshmen much less that there was at least one per student

Hi hopped on board in early 2005 with an iBook. It turned out to be a very wise and enlightening decision.