For me, the iMac has not only brought Apple’s name to the forefront of the media’s and general public’s minds, but it has also saved Apple’s position in education, which in my mind was slowly but surely being taken over by Wintel PC’s.
The school I attend has recently bought 12 iMacs (7 Bondi Blue and one each of the “fruit” colours). I was really quite amazed at the reaction the iMacs got from my fellow pupils, and after a quick show of hands in my computing class I found that over half would prefer to have an iMac than a Wintel computer, surely a sign of Apple’s growing popularity. Some of the reactions of die-hard Windows users were not so complimentary with their words being of the sort “They are just computers with multi-coloured plastic.” True. Yes. But who said that all computers had to be beige?
Our class uses the iMacs for the qualification course that the local government sets us. The course involves word processing, spreadsheets, programming in Comal and databases. Other computer formats can do this, even the old Acorn’s we used to have, but I feel that my class will learn so much more about how an operating system works because of the way that the Mac OS is WYSIWYG. To move a file to another folder I would rather drag and drop than type in its new location.
Before the iMacs came into play, the Macintosh was treated as a bit of a joke by my fellow pupils. They regarded it as having no games software and not being able to connect to the Internet (both strictly untrue). One of the reasons my friends didn’t think that the Mac could connect to the Internet is the lack of Internet magazines in the UK that pay even a passing glance at the Mac, something which has got better since the release of the iMac. Both accusations have finally been put to rest in their minds with the release of the iMac and games like Tomb Raider II and MDK. Also, if Apple had made more of a push with the advertising (in the UK anyway), I don’t believe that there is any doubt that Apple’s market share in the UK would be bigger. It is only now that the general public has actually heard of Apple and is acknowledging that they can buy an Apple without being subjected to constant arguments about whose computer is better.
On the subject of Apple increasing its market share, if Apple strives to further increase its stance in education, general public sales will also increase as students usually want the computers that they use in school and new users aren’t really interested in a computers’ processor speeds. They just want a computer that will look good in the living room.
Also if Apple wants to further increase its market share, it must make sure that its adverts (here in the UK anyway), explain fully what the product is. Us Brits had an advert on the TV a couple of weeks ago promoting the fruit colour iMacs. An excellent advert if you ask me, lots of fruity iMacs flying around my TV, but it could have been improved by maybe mentioning the affordability of the iMac to the average person. A week later another Apple advert was on the TV, this time for the “Yosemite” G3’s. When it came on I was looking forward to hearing the computer’s advantages over Wintel PC’s, but nothing on this subject was mentioned. The advert just went along the lines of “Another year, Another Revolution.” Surely since the computer is targeted at professionals it should be rhyming off the “vital specs” so that the average professional PC user may actually sit up and take notice of the Mac.
Finally, here’s to Apple’s future!
Francis is 14 and has been an avid Mac fan since the age of 8. A third-year  
high school student in England, he is basically just an ordinary user who
enjoys writing articles. He can be reached at <francis@tamburrini.club24.co.uk>.
