Friday 13 March 2015

Shiny things update

We had a power outage at lunchtime today that took out most of campus, and meant that all the buildings were evacuated while it was fixed.

However, the wifi network, being protected by a UPS kept going with the result that all the students who'd been ejected could keep on working by sitting on a bench, under a tree, or what have you.

So, as is my wont, I took a walk to make an informal count of what students are using.

And the answer's Apple.

A lot of Macbook Airs and quite a few Macbook pro's. There were a reasonable number of Windows laptops as well, which I'll guess were mostly windows 8 purely because they all looked reasonably new - I'd no way of sorting out the Windows 7 machines from the Windows 8. Most of the windows machines were 15" screen models.

Few if any students were using a tablet - I guess if you have to carry one device, you'd carry a laptop rather than a tablet.

In contrast, quite a few of the staff members who'd had the presence of mind to grab a device on the way out had grabbed older, and quite often well used looking, laptops (Mostly windows, rather than Macs, although there were some Mac users). Again, not a lot of tablets in view, and no small format computers.

Of the students I'd guess 60-65% were Mac users, as opposed to 25% of staff.

Long term this might have implications for the future of Windows - if a lot of people who potentially will become significant users of computing have migrated away from Windows it suggests that that revenue stream may diminish.

But then of course, there's always Office, which is still seeming to retain its stranglehold on the wordprocessor and spreadsheet market ...


No comments: