Apple is taking over San Francisco

It's scary. Everywhere I look around me, there is a mac. Yes, they are attractive, with their sleek aluminium frame and their slim elegant design and their overt emphasis on eye-candy. Of course, the san-francisco state of mind is hi-tech and artisitic and the mac caters to that.

What is surprising is that here, at UCSF, one of the bastions of higher education, the macintosh is slowly tightening its vice-like grip. I see around me, postdocs who are toying with the idea of updating the laptops, being continually bombarded with lots of sly suggestions. "oh the mac is so much cooler". there is only so much resistance to coolness peer pressure that an average science nerd can take. the secret is the adoption of unix for the apple os x. With unix under the hood, it is quite simple, even elementary to run academic software. Plus, you can connect your iPod up.

Speaking of the iPod, the mini-iPod got released recently and news is that the first run got completely sold out. Not coincindentally, Apple finally opened an Apple store in downtown San Francisco. It is perhaps a little surprising that there hasn't been one in San Francisco since it is after all, the home of Apple but we should keep in mind that the real home is down south in Palo Alto, not the seedy shopping thrall of downtown.