Sure, give them computer education. But I still don't see how learning about an ancient machine is going to help modern kids. I learned about fortran and punch cards when I was in school and I really don't feel like any of it was that valuable. If anything, why not just have them mess around with a modern computer? If the goal is to just familiarize them with components. Showing someone an ancient machine seems like a waste of time.

I have setup plenty of hackintoshes and I wouldn't recommend it for high school kids who aren't into computers.

At this stage in the game I don't agree. I used all the computers you mentioned and they don't really have any bearing (sp?) on current computing.

The boss gets to run around with an ipad/macbook air because they don't have to any real work on it.

If we are training kids for the future we should definitely have them use a windows/linux variant. I remember back in the university our C++ class had a computer lab that was split between Macs and PCs. The PCs would always be all in use and I had to make do on a mac. I definitely did not enjoy having to do everything differently than the majority of the class, but my teacher appreciated me taking one for the team. If anything I think having a multi platform environment would be good for students having to deal with different platforms at different companies.

I was thinking about Sony's consumer electronics strategy. A pair of their most successfully products, the walkman and later the discman were amazingly successful. 1) Because they looked and worked awesome. 2) Used the industry standard media that everyone had. I remember loving my sony cybershot camera, except to get the photos off I had to use the ghetto sony picture software and a serial connection. (They didn't like usb for a long time for some reason) It seems that everytime they try and shoehorn us into their (usually inferior) proprietary formats they screw themselves. Sony makes great looking products, they just need to stop forcing consumers into proprietary shite.