The proliferation of the PowerBook on the Berklee campus makes big news on the Apple web site.

January 5, 2005

The Berklee campus has a whole new look these days. We're not talking about renovations, new studios, or the latest fashion trends. It's the Macintosh PowerBook G4 laptops. They're everywhere. A couple of students are cross-legged on the floor near the drum lockers, looking at a big band chart created in Finale. Another is sitting in the cafeteria, putting some final touches on a new composition recorded with GarageBand. And there's a student sitting in the main lobby, waiting for a practice room. She's hooked into the wireless network, checking her email.

Berklee is a place where you'll always find the latest trends in the music industry manifesting in campus culture. Or is it starting to work the other way around? Just over a year ago, the college began requiring that all entering students own a PowerBook, and now the laptop machine is seen around campus as much as any musical instrument.

The change has proved so powerful and successful that an Apple Computer scribe came to Boston recently to find out just what we're doing with all these laptops. The result of that visit is a three-part feature story on the Apple web site, part of Apple's Profiles in Success, a series of articles focusing on how educational institutions use Apple products. You can view the Berklee profile, "PowerBook is Musician's Muse," on Apple's web site.

And be sure to check out two other recent features on how Berklee students use technology, one focusing on how the college's student-run record label uses Macintosh products and the other on how the label uses Microsoft Office.