• Apples everywhere

    I am not a zealot. Really. I recognize there’s such a thing as personal preference. There was even one time when I recommended a Windows PC (over a Mac) to someone. As it happens, that person has regretted taking my advice ever since, but I digress. Trapped in an office filled with Michael Dell’s evil spawn, I kid with my office mates about our choice of computers, but it’s all good natured. The guy next door threatened to stick an apple sticker on my (office) door, and I excitedly asked him if he had two (one for my car). To this day I’ve got that same, tacky red apple sticker on my door… my badge of honor.

    I don’t want to convert the world to the Mac OS, but sometimes I buy into a little of the doom and gloom… the stories of Apple’s demise. I wouldn’t mind if more people shared my affinity for Apple and their wares, if for no other reason that it makes it more likely they’ll stay in business, and keep making the products I like. As I’ve noted before, my dad had one of the original Macs, and still has that first issue of Macworld magazine (he was a subscriber until the mid 90’s, when the internet became a better source). I only mention this because I’ve been around during times of feast and famine. And yes, I owned a Performa.

    Even though Apple has put those dark days far behind them, the news I read on my feed reader still took me by surprise:

    Apple laptops grab 17.6% share – Mac – Macworld UK

    According to NPD, Apple’s retail laptop market share for June 2007 was 17.6 per cent, a 2.2 per cent increase over the same period last year when Apple posted a 15.4 per cent market share.

    I spent my impressionable years during that time when Apple’s market share (in terms of sales, not installed user base) was doing really well to be above 3 percent. Seventeen percent of the laptop market blows my mind.

  • You mean the English don’t use the English system?

    I cribbed this from Daringfireball.net:

    GOOD Magazine

    What do Myanmar, Liberia, and the U.S. have in common? According to info gleaned from the link, we’re the only ones not using the metric system.

  • Proving nothing

    There are lots of studies that prove nothing, but how often do you see them reported in the news?

    Actually, this is an important study in one respect… it’s proof that I was right (restoring the natural order), and it’s timely (given the start of school today – in these parts): it makes no difference wether Beth does her homework on her bed.

    Here’s to me.

    McClatchy Washington Bureau | 08/21/2007 | Does studying in bed hurt grades?

    So what did Gifford discover in his eight-college study habit survey titled “The Bed or the Desk?”

    “No difference between them” when it came to GPA, Gifford and his psychology department mentor, Robert Sommer, wrote in the May 1968 issue of Personnel and Guidance Journal. It’s the only widely known serious examination of the bed-desk question.

    Gifford and Sommer found that of the above-average scholars surveyed, half studied at their desks and half studied on their beds. Among the below-average students, 47 percent studied abed and 53 percent studied at their desks.