See, now here's the sort of thing that always gives us the heebie-jeebies. First we've got Apple issuing an earnings warning in part due to slow sales in one of its long-time strongholds, the education market. Then we get the news that, at least according to one set of numbers, Dell has knocked Apple out of the top spot in education sales. And now faithful viewer Vince Briones points out further evidence of what appears to be a very disturbing trend: the increasing tendency of schools to opt for Wintels over Macs.

Here's the scoop: according to the Boston Globe, it seems that AtAT's home state of Massachusetts is looking to require that all students at its public colleges "buy and use their own laptops." In and of itself, that doesn't sound like such a bad idea; as far as we're concerned, we would have loved an excuse to force the ol' parental units to buy us PowerBooks back when we were in school. Unfortunately, it sounds like PowerBooks and iBooks won't be an option for many of the students of tomorrow anyway, because of the voucher-based subsidy program that the state is reportedly putting together. Massachusetts wants to reduce the cost of laptops for students who receive financial aid by issuing price vouchers, but to do that, "state officials have been in talks with computer makers IBM, Compaq, Gateway, and Dell." Notice anyone missing from that list?

The real tragedy, of course, is that the iBook is a great option for many college students: it's low-cost, fast, stylish, and rugged enough to survive all those times it'll get dropped when its owner is falling-down drunk. (Er, it's probably best not to mention that selling point to the parents.) But even those students who don't need vouchers and aren't going to be financially locked into a Wintel purchase may not have much of a choice. If this proposed laptop ownership requirement comes to pass, we imagine it's pretty darn likely that the state would issue a set of specs to which all student laptops must conform-- and we're betting it's going to be a very Wintel-centric list.

This all sounds like just another symptom of the disease, and hopefully Apple is working on a cure. Deep down, though, while we'd love to believe that Apple has representatives lobbying away at the Massachusetts bigwigs trying to gets Macs included in this proposed laptop requirement, we strongly suspect that the company is ignoring the situation altogether. And with literally tens of thousands of young adults who may soon need to buy laptops to attend Massachusetts public colleges just itching to spend their parents' money, if Apple isn't working hard to get in on the action, it's throwing away a golden opportunity.