At last, we've unlocked the real reason why Apple only commands a measly twentieth of the market these days. Is it because the company neglected to open up licensing of the Mac OS and allow a burgeoning clone market that could have competed with the influx of cheap x86 PCs? Nope. Is it because Microsoft knew how to combine a mediocre rip-off of the Mac's interface and a flood of cheap hardware into a chokehold monopoly forged of sheer Windows ubiquity? Closer, maybe, but nuh-uh. Is it because Windows represents such a superior computing experience that nineteen out of twenty people actually make an educated, informed choice of Windows over the Mac? Mmmm... maybe it's time to put down the crack pipe, buddy.

No, the real reason why the Mac's market share is so low is this: the CIA wants it that way. Now, sure, you could call this a paranoid delusion brought on by the hysteria that there are only 33 days left until The X-Files calls it quits forever, but we've got evidence-- in the form of a Wired article first pointed out by faithful viewer scubus. Apparently some guy stumbled upon a "Secret Agent Mac" with an operative number of "SE/30 CSI 1891T"; this weird little puppy looks pretty much like a regular SE/30, except that it's got a weird and mysterious bulge in the back, a flop-down front panel that reveals an internal Bernoulli drive, and an all-metal case that's been "TEMPEST-shielded" to prevent spies from intercepting leaked electromagnetic emissions and somehow reconstructing sensitive information. Now there's a Mac who leads a life of danger!

Now, in and of itself, a TEMPEST-shielded custom Mac might not be so weird-- anyone could buy a Mac and customize the bejeezus out of it, right? Except that this particular Mac appears to have come this way straight from Apple, and no one knows who used it or, even more bizarre, how it came to be "just sitting there on a pallet" in the Weird Stuff Warehouse. According to the owner, the 1891T is "a real Apple machine-- it wasn't made or adapted by another company-- so it must have been a classified project." So as far as we can tell, Apple was cranking out special spy-proof Macs for the CIA or the NSA or maybe some other government agency way too secret to mention. Ooooooo.

It stands to reason, of course, that if said unknown government agency were so insistent on airtight security that nobody had ever even heard of this particular Mac model until a decade after it was likely produced (and probably never would have, had some mole from the inside not risked his life to place that 1891T onto that pallet in the interests of proving that the truth is out there), it's probably in that agency's best interests to ensure that the Mac never gains true mass market acceptance. So there you have it, folks-- the real reason why the Mac never caught on like it should have: it's all in the interest of national security. Blame the government.