A Pilgrim’s Digression

17 hurt as computer sale turns into stampede

From today’s Washington Post:

Presented with a rare chance to get a used laptop computer for $50, a crowd of more than 5,000 showed up hours early yesterday at the Richmond International Raceway and—when the gates finally were flung open at 7 a.m.—turned into an unruly stampede, as people pushed, shoved and beat each other to get to the Apple iBooks. Elderly men and women were trampled and a girl’s stroller was crushed.

MacDailyNews provides a few more explicit details, quoting an AP report:

A rush to purchase $50 used laptops turned into a violent stampede Tuesday, with people getting thrown to the pavement, beaten with a folding chair and nearly driven over. One woman went so far to wet herself rather than surrender her place in line. ‘This is total, total chaos,’ said Latoya Jones, 19, who lost one of her flip-flops in the ordeal and later limped around on the sizzling blacktop with one foot bare…

There is also a Joy of Tech comic which you can view here.

Henrico County recently ended a deal with Apple that had provided thousands of iBooks to county school students. The deal had been in place since 2001, but for whatever reasons, Henrico decided to switch to Dell and Windows.

When I saw the first advertisement for this sale a few weeks ago, I seriously considered taking off work and driving down to Richmond. I have been wanting another iBook, and this seemed like the ultimate deal. I talked about it with my wife and she said that as heavily as this sale was being advertised, it would be nearly impossible to get one of these computers. MacDailyNews supported her assertion by reporting recently that people were travelling from as far as North Carolina and camping out days in advance.

Even so, as recently as Monday I was still tempted to take off work and drive down there and give it a shot. I am so glad I didn’t do it.

Although I am tempted to say I’d piss on myself, too, to get an iBook for $50.00, obviously the fact that I wasn’t even willing to fight a crowd belies that assertion. Still, what a deal. When was the last time you heard about someone pissing themselves or beating someone with a folding chair to buy a four-year-old Dell laptop running Windows?

You’ve never heard of such a thing, you say? Gee, I wonder why. Could it be because these cheap, generic PCs and the cheap, generic operating system that runs on them are disposable crap, like dirty diapers and other rubbish that people would just as soon discard when they’re finished with them?

That’s my anti-PC rant for the day. Now for my anti-school administration rant.

Having worked in a public school system and participated, however frustratingly, in decisions to purchase computer equipment for schools, I know how these administrators think. They’re all about the bottom line, first and foremost, but the bottom line for them extends only as far as this year’s budget.

Thus they inexplicably buy PCs, which require higher maintenance and more workers to maintain them, and which are less secure than Macintosh computers. Why do they submit to this terrible deal? Because these boxes are fucking cheap and ubiquitous as shit!

The school system I worked for had a deal with Gateway. Gateway, you ask? What’s that? Gateway was a PC manufacturer that lasted all of what, maybe five years? Where is Gateway now? When I left the school system, the SysAdmin was transitioning the schools to Dells. My guess is, another five years and Dell will be defunct or sold and the school will be transitioning to something else.

I talked frequently to the Administrator in charge of deciding which computers to purchase. There was only one adminstrator in charge of that decision, since it was a rural school system, and he was not an especially bigoted man. But he was cheap, or maybe “thrifty” if you really want to be generous. He could not see past the short term expense of buying new Macs.

Meanwhile, another school system one or two counties over was a Mac and PC school system, with Macs outnumbering PCs. I took summer classes for recertification in schools in that system, and I talked to their administrators, and there was no doubt in my mind which school system had the better network and which school system had made the better purchasing decisions.

The Administrator with whom I spoke pointed out two things that immediately lower the long-term cost of owning Macs: one, problems requiring sophisticated Tech Support rarely occur. Two, Macs retain their usefulness longer. Alongside brand new iMacs, this school system also had in use older, beige Macs from the mid-nineties.

On the issue of Tech Support, the Administrator said that his support staff was less than half the size of what it would be if he had a Windows network. Problems with Windows are significantly more frequent, and it takes a skilled professional to solve them. Whereas most problems with a Mac can be handled by the end user with merely some phone support from a Techie in the central administration office.

All I can say is, Henrico County school officials are fools. Utter fools. Thrifty fools, but fools nonetheless. 5000 people turned out to buy these four year old computers. Does that sound like Apple Computer is obscure, or used by only “a few zealots?”

I think the tide may be about to turn. That’s been said before, and Apple has missed the tide, but I can’t ever remember this many factors aligning in Apple’s favor. Apple announced its switch to Intel chips earlier this year; the iPod is generating demands for Mac computers as well; the next version of Windows, codenamed Longhorn, or Windows XP Service Pack 3, or whatever it is called, isn’t due out even in a stripped down form until 2006. I wonder how many of those Henrico rioters owned iPods and were taking this opportunity to buy the Mac to accompany it? Be nice to know.

If there was ever a time for Apple to surge forward, now is that time. Let’s hope Steve Jobs doesn’t miss this opportunity the way Apple executives have let others pass on by.