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.

For a writer wanna-be, I’m hopelessly tethered to random infusions of rhyme, alliteration, and odd word pairings. But that’s not really what I wanted to say today; I distracted myself with a bout of whimsy following the title conception phase of this entry.

It was another fit of whimsy which prompted my fingers to grace the keyboard of the TAM this morning (I hear you, enough with the TAM already!). I was holding in my hands a piece of technological marvel: a 2 GB SD card, stamped out in mass quantities, and sold for 20 bucks on the open market. That’s just ridiculous… indistinguishable from magic just 18 years ago… when I was tooling around with my mark-one Mac at UF (which came with less RAM than a floppy and no hard drive). Now a 2 GB SD card serves to double the size of the TAM’s hard drive – an uber portable mechanism to transfer files between the home iTunes library and the TAM.

It’s important to note that OS9, and the versions of iTunes that will run on my little piece of Apple history, are not compatible with my mark-four iPod… thus the SD card and USB card reader – which I use anyway for my Palm T/X and my LG cell phone.

Damn I need me an iPhone.

I’m sure there are those of you out there who’ve probably worked on home computers (the predecessor to the mid-90’s “personal computer”) with much less processing punch than my old Mac. Heck, I remember my dad showing me some basic… well, BASIC… on our state of the art TRS-80 (of Tandy / Radio Shack fame). That was way back before even “home computers,” when we just had “microcomputers” (“micro” because they didn’t take up a room).

Sometimes I think I’m just easily impressed.

I just wanted to close out this first evening in the hospital by congratulating a number of you on your exceedingly good taste in computers. The picture of my 20th Anniversary Mac got more views on Flickr in the first week than any of my other pictures.

Given the poorly concealed looks of contempt from our Windows network administrator at work, it’s nice to see some evidence that there are those out there who share my appreciation of Apple and their wares.

You got me, it’s not my birthday. As far as I know, no one I know has a birthday today. All of this begs the question: have I finally found an edge and fallen off?

Sometime between March and May of 1997, Apple Computer started shipping a piece of hardware they called the Twentieth Anniversary Macintosh (TAM for short). By my way of reconning, we’re in still in the 10th anniversary window of one of my favorite computers.

That’s right friends, it’s the tenth anniversary of the Twentieth Anniversary Mac (give or take a month or so). In this age of contrived holidays, I think my aging beauty is worthy of a little recognition. In this age of commodity computers, the fact that my TAM is still alive and kicking is a testament to the company that made it. The fact that I still use a ten year old computer on a daily basis… well now I’m getting a little redundant. Please excuse my enthusiasm.

Like I need a reason to loaf… but my pump is particularly primed this morning. Yesterday was our 13th wedding anniversary. With anniversaries already on my mind, today is the perfect day to celebrate another one.

In honor of this event, I’m typing this entry up on the old girl. Posting will be delayed though. I’ll have to transport it via flash drive to my trusty PowerBook at home. (Having my own computer in the office is at best a dark shade of gray… and it’s certainly not allowed to be connected to the network. Hell, we’re not even allowed to have flash drives for Pete’s sake. Now that I invoke his name… who the heck is Pete?)

With iTunes pumping crisp music through the TAM’s Bose sound system… I’m the envy of the office (and if I’m not, I should be).

We don’t need no stinking ear buds here!

My camera phone strikes again.

There’s a phenomenon frequently associated with “Windows PCs” where apiece of hardware spontaneously takes flight. It’s usually a keyboard or mouse, but in a few documented cases it has happened to monitors and CPUs as well.

Recent studies suggest this “phenomenon” is not spontaneous at all; but rather, a pre-meditated attempt by an owner to bleed off a little pressure from the boiler. Some may call this catharsis… but you know me, I’m hesitant to make a value judgement where computer operating systems are concerned.

I will tell you this though: a piece of computer hardware almost took flight in our house last night. Oh the horror! I haven’t seen my computer do such strange things since… well… ever. Holy deus ex machina Batman! Universal Access was turned on! I turned it off and the problem was solved.

The question is, how did it get turned on? I’m not sure I want to know.