SXSW: Where have all the Macs gone?

AUSTIN, Texas--A year ago, at the 2006 South by Southwest festival, I noted with a bit of a twinkle in my eye that one way to know the conference was the coolest place on Earth was by pressrooms. The standard province of broken down Wintel desktops had been had been blessed with gleaming new MacBook Pro laptops.

And we all know, don't we, that where there are Macs, the cool and hip factors are higher.

So how cool is that, I thought?

At SXSW 2007, however, the coordinators of the pressroom apparently decided that cool was out. How do I know?

Instead of shiny new Macs, there aren't even faded old Macs. Rather, the pressroom has 10 seemingly new Dell laptops.

Why? Who knows. I'm sure those computers work fine, though I wouldn't want to have to be the one to try to get support for them if they break.

It just feels like a step back, like someone decided we needed to be more serious.

Good thing I brought my own Mac with me. Insert smiley here.