The University + Mac Love Affair

A recent survey shows that Apple has finally edged out Dell for being #1 in "higher education" U.S. market share. These numbers are no surprise to anyone in a college setting as just a quick glance around you see drones of Macbooks amongst Dell's and HP's..... maybe a few rogue Toshibas and Sonys, but a class of white Macbooks is no big shocker these days. A lot of people on the web are stating how these numbers don't mean anything when the overall market share is still so low globally.
The real take away out of this is not Apple's current global market share, but the fact that today's college students who can aptly learn technology are favoring the OS X interface. What do you think will happen when roughly half of graduating College students prefer Mac's? If you think for a second that Windows was any different at one point, you are wrong. Apple's marketing engine understands that if you can get college students on a Mac today, that might put their place of business onto a Mac tomorrow.
With Steve Jobs apparent goal to keep a torrent of Apple announcments this year there is apparently no end in sight for their buzz machine rolling through the U.S. Some colleges are even offering free iphones and macbooks to new students and a trade-in program for those running Windows based systems.