We don't usually like to close with a downer, but hey, sometimes it just seems appropriate, you know? If there's a death, for example, propriety dictates that you stick that after the yuks 'n' giggles out of respect for the deceased-- despite the fact that the mourners could probably use a laugh or two to take the edge off, while the deceased is presumably too busy being dead to care all that much about propriety in the first place. Whatever. We don't make the rules. Heck, we don't even follow 'em all that often.

This time, though, we just feel that the situation is serious enough to warrant a sober and respectful mention after the day's ha-has. Faithful viewer bo pointed out a Nashville Business Journal article which reveals some sales statistics that are downright startling-- or should be, anyway, especially if you're an AtAT veteran from way back when. Sticking to the convention of shoving all the ugly stuff in at the end, here's the good news first: Apple has a larger share of the education market than Hewlett-Packard, Gateway, and IBM. The bad news is that while Apple has the second-largest slice of that particular pie, Dell is scarfing down the biggest. And the worst news of all is that Dell's slice is over three times the size of Apple's.

No kidding! Reportedly Dell has a whopping 44% of the education market, while Apple holds a mere 14%. Longtime AtAT fans may recall the controversy and duelling press releases back in '99 (and, believe it or not, again in 2000) when Dell claimed it had toppled Apple from the number one spot while Apple, citing sales numbers from a different source, claimed that Dell had done no such thing. What a difference four or five years can make, hmmmm? Because these latest figures are so drastically different that no amount of fudging or "interpretation" is going to put Apple back in the lead.

And the reason that this counts as a sort of death is because Apple used to be the uncontested king of education sales; no one else came close. About ten years ago you could add up the sales from all the Wintel manufacturers, and they still wouldn't equal Apple's share. Now, though, with Macs trailing Dells 3 to 1 (and trailing Wintels 7 to 1), we have to assume that Apple's goals have changed. Not that the company would ever give up and exit the education market completely, of course; second place is nothing to sneeze at. But we doubt that Apple's education bigwigs are sitting around figuring out ways to reclaim the top spot, just like Apple as a whole isn't strategizing on how it can take the market share lead from Windows. And if retaking first place in education is no longer a concrete goal for Apple, then yes, that's a death of sorts, and worth mourning.

So a moment of silence, if you will, for Apple's reign as the Education King; it may have ended four or five years ago, but it's only now that the situation really feels permanent. If we're wrong, and ten years from now Apple's back to the 61% share it enjoyed in 1993, well, we'll feel kinda dumb for having worn these black armbands, but we're always up for a good rebirth story.