Citadel of the Blogs The Inbox of the Internet (really)

I found the following story disturbing in so many ways. I mean, what example are we hoping to teach our children here? Son, I’d punch another man just to use your schools’ iBook? Good gawd. Proof that once again that we must have evolved from apes–if not the vulture family.

One Man’s Trash
If you needed even more proof of the fanaticism of Mac
users, look no further than the public reaction to a recent hard- ware
giveaway. You may have heard about the efforts of the Henrico County,
Virginia, school district to get rid of some aging iBooks: Back in
2001, the school district inked a deal with Apple to supply its
students with Apple laptops. This year, when the district opted to dump
Apple iBooks in favor of computers from Dell, offi- cials took some of
the four-year-old iBooks and offered them to local resi- dents for $50.
The result was a mob scene at the local race track where the machines
were to be sold off; residents showed up hours before the gates opened.
When the sale finally began, there was a stam- pede as people jockeyed
for a place in line. Punches and lawn furniture were thrown, and people
were hurt as they were trampled upon by others. One person even drove
into the crowd with a car. We all know the sort of fierce loyalty Apple
engenders in some people—and, well, $50 for an Apple laptop that’s
still usable is a steal. But the director of general services for
Henrico County mused to reporters after the fact that it was strange
that people were so eager to get their hands on laptop computers that
had already seen four years of hard use and abuse at the hands of
schoolkids—“computers with less- than-desirable attributes” is how he
described them. Four years from now, perhaps Hen- rico County residents
will feel that way about the machines that replaced those iBooks, and
there won’t be another stampede.—PETERCOHEN