We know we should be excited about Apple's latest press release, but frankly, it's just more of the same. According to International Data Corp., no one's yet managed to topple Apple from the Education throne; in the first quarter of 2000, Apple secured a 26% share among educational computer purchases in the U.S. and 14% worldwide, thus retaining its hold on the top spot. Which means that Apple's the king of educational computing. Still. Why, we haven't been this thrilled since, oh, about ten minutes ago-- when we found an abnormally large raisin in our trail mix.

But since it's our job to take dull (though pleasant) news and find something interesting about it, we decided to plunder Apple's press release archive to find out just how the latest results compare to those from, say, three quarters ago. What we found was this gem, Apple's reaction to Dell's claim of educational sales superiority last October. (Longtime viewers will recall that Dell "accidentally" forgot to include Apple's direct sales when calculating market share percentages. Oops.) IDC states that in Q299, Apple held 22.2% of the pie-- enough to hold first place even back then. So the real good news here is not that Apple's still in first place-- it's that Apple's in first place and its relative market share has grown a few percentage points over nine months. Them's good eatin'.

We wouldn't get too cheery if we were you, though. Apple may be improving its sales into the education channel, but a 26% share means that roughly one out of every four computers sold to schools are Macs-- while the other three aren't. We'll feel a lot more comfortable once Apple pushes its chunk up to 50%, or even 75%. Don't laugh; between iMacs, iBooks, AirPort, and various other school-friendly goodies coming out of Apple these days, we figure the sky's the limit. Now if you'll excuse us, we have a raisin to measure. Guinness, here we come!

Regardless of what marketing dude Phil Schiller may have said in a public moment of weakness, is there anyone out there who seriously believes that Apple is totally focused on the personal computer space? Jobs and his intrepid band of Cupertino magicmakers would have to be nuts not to have at least a few other irons in the fire-- and while Crazy Steve's sanity level is wide open to interpretation, we've never felt he was "let's cede vast explosive-growth markets to the competition just for the heck of it" crazy, his early anti-clone sentiment aside. So even though an Apple-branded post-Newton PDA may never see the light of day, we highly doubt that Apple wasn't (isn't?) actively working on one. Apple could crank out all sorts of wild consumer-oriented gadgets if it wanted to.

Enter the iPhone. Rumors of a collaboration between Apple and one or more mobile phone companies (Nokia and Ericsson are the two we hear mentioned most frequently) have been bouncing around for months now, but as always, actual facts about this supposed project are few and far between. In fact, one could fit the hard details of what's going on into an eight-ounce water glass-- and still have room left over for eight ounces of yummy Tang. As far as we know, Apple and Nokia are just setting up a bowling league. But then Mac OS Rumors goes and throws us all a few more scraps, claiming that there's more to these frequent meetings than gutter balls and rented shoes: Apple may be working on its own digital cell phone.

Now, if you're thinking that "Apple + Nokia = Apple-branded phone" sounds an awful lot like "Apple + Palm = Apple-branded PDA," well, you're not alone. Meetings do not a product make. Still, it's an intriguing possibility; the idea, apparently, is that Apple's phone would grant users of next-generation PowerBooks and iBooks "wireless telephony and Internet voice communications capabilities." (Interpret that however you please.) Personally, we'd be more than thrilled with an "iPhone" that connects to a USB port and allows a mobile Mac to dial in to a standard Internet provider for go-anywhere connectivity. In any case, if you believe Phil, the iPhone is just another rumormonger pipe dream-- but then, you'd be putting your trust in Marketing, and we all know how dangerous that can be.

Apparently, certain archetypes in the Mac world are fated to remain with us until the end of time. We speak not of the lovable dogcow, nor of Apple's comforting logo; we refer instead to the evil spectre of the Flaming PowerBook. This archetype first sprang into existence when Apple issued a recall due to the PowerBook 5300 battery's tendency to combust under certain conditions. Ever since the 5300's secondary use as an incendiary device "came to light," Apple's tried to live down the vivid image of some hale and hearty when-life-hands-you-lemons geek merrily roasting marshmallows over the smoldering remains of his PowerBook.

Now, while we've never seen a PowerBook on fire ourselves (the closest we've come was watching some third-party RAM catch fire on the motherboard of a Power Mac 7500), we had hoped that Apple had finally outlived the Flaming PowerBook debacle and moved on to happier times. Sadly, that doesn't seem to be the case. According to Go2Mac, one reader watched his Lombard PowerBook actually catch fire while he was typing on it. "There was real smoke and it was quickly melting the case on the bottom," he says. Given the lack of reports of other Lombards bursting into flame, it's probably safe to assume that his experience was merely a "freak accident," but comparisons to the 5300 are unavoidable.

By the way, every single time we mention the pyrotechnic qualities of the 5300 in obvious jest, we soon find our inbox stuffed with complaints from indignant 5300 users who know that the media hype of the problem was far worse than the defect itself; the only 5300 that actually caught fire was in Apple's lab, not a user's hands. In the spirit of conciliation, may we refer our viewers to a followup article at Go2Mac? In it, a reader provides relatively spin-free facts about 1995's Great PowerBook Flame-Up. Curl up in front of a toasty fire and enjoy.