Macs coming back to Capitol Hill Senate offices

For years, members of Congress who wanted to use Macs in their offices were discouraged from doing so. That's all changing, and Thomas Burr of the Salt Lake Tribune now reports that incoming freshman senator Mike Lee (R-Utah) will have his big screen iMac in his new office. His staff will be using Macs as well.

In previous years, senators' Macs were virtually eliminated by the office of the Senate Sergeant at Arms (where the chief administrative and IT management functions reside for the legislative chamber). Despite the official "we don't support the Mac" stance, there were some holdouts. The late Senator Edward Kennedy had both desktop Macs and laptops, as did Senator Tim Johnson of South Dakota.

Now the rules have changed, and Macs and iPads are making inroads where Apple products once feared to tread. By the way, Senator Orrin Hatch's office runs on Windows, but according to the Trib, the senior senator from Utah is using an iPad.