I don’t think so…

Writing in Business Week, technology writer Charles Haddad in his “Byte of the Apple” column states that Apple has already lost the battle for the educational market. He makes a valid argument that they have lost because IT managers like to hang with what they know and that is, of course, Windows.

I’ve seen this phenomena in action myself when I worked as a technical writer for a manufacturing company here in Houston. The IT department manager wanted to cling to Windows 3.1 and Netware long after it had become either efficient or economical to do so. We took our part of the company over to Windows 95 and Ethernet practivally on our own.

I agree that Haddad’s premise is accurate and that Apple is fighting an uphill battle. I don’t agree with his conclusion, however. From my perspective, I believe that Apple has begun what will prove to be a magnificent, long, uphill climb. As more and more people in all markets see the beauty and ease of use of OS X and Apple’s machines, they will choose Macs more and more. I’m certainly talking to more and more people at all levels who are open to looking at a Mac. I talked to one such person today, and he was en engineer who had not been considering it. And that’s forgetting that I was talking to a woman I work with who told me a relative of hers was making DVD slide shows from pictures they’d taken during a vacation to Italy. He was using a Mac and Final Cut pro to do his editing.