Everyone Owns a Mac

Think Different... just like everyone else.

"I find it incredibly dumbfounding that every character in Metal Gear Solid is a Mac user.

— Dartigan, Everything Wrong With Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of The Patriots

In the real world, the vast, vast majority (85% - 90%) of personal/home computers run some version of Microsoft Windows. In particular, the majority of engineers, accountants, self-employed people and teachers use Windows PCs. A fairly small number of geeks, a decently large number of data centers and supercomputer labs, and many, many scientists also run Unix-like systems, particularly Linux.^note macOS is a part-proprietary, part-open-source UNIX-based operating system, as of OS X - the previous OS releases were not UNIX-based This leaves Apple Macintoshes as the minority interest mainly of a small minority of college students^note The Mac was specifically targeted toward higher education, academics, and a number of "creative" types — artists, writers, musicians, etc.

However... it just so happens that the latter kind of people are the ones responsible for all media. Combine that with the often-messianic zeal that Apple's hardware/software seems to generate in all who buy into it, and we have Apple computers being massively disproportionately represented.

And then we have the fact that Apple knows damn well about this situation and is more than willing to supply free hardware, though they reportedly never pay for Product Placement. While Windows holds a much larger share of the market, its share is spread among several large and many small vendors. While Microsoft has ventured into hardware with their very well-received Surface line, they hold a relatively small share of the market, focusing on premium (i.e.: direct Mac competitors) leaving mass market PCs to other manufacturers. So despite an uptick in Surface product placement, the bulk of PC representation in TV and film are generic looking laptops that have Windows replaced by a Viewer-Friendly Interface. At the same time, though, Apple doesn't allow villains to use their products, which can result in spoilers for sufficiently observant viewers (unless directors ban iProducts from their work entirely).

It also helps that the minimalist design of most Apple products means that, not only do they not stand out in the background of a shot, but they also look pretty damn slick, too.

Note that this does not apply to iDevices, which are actually very popular in the real world. Given that in late 2012, iPads account for something like 70% of all tablet computers, they're emphatically NOT this trope — it would be more notable if someone were using a tablet that was not an iPad.

For iPhones, this applies to some degree — as of 2016, the iPhone is the leading phone model in market share in the United States with a 40% market share, but it's just a relative plurality as Samsung is not far behind with a 31% market share. Despite this, it would seem that the iPhone in Hollywood has a 90% market share, and you will be hard-pressed to see a Samsung or other Android-based phone in American media. However, Apple apparently has a rule when lending out equipment that villainous characters may not be seen using iPhones or any other Apple product.^note  - according to Rian Johnson, this became a minor headache when making Knives Out, because if everyone except the killer was using an iPhone it would be obvious for everyone in the know who had, in fact, dunnit - so in the end no one got an iPhone..

See also iPhony, where a parody or Expy is used instead. Americans Hate Tingle is a possible aversion of this trope.

Note that this is effectively an Enforced Trope for shows on Apple TV+, since the programs are an effective way for Apple to promote their products free of charge. Shows like Ted Lasso and The Morning Show have plenty of scenes where their characters are seen typing away on Macs and using iPhones, often with the logo visible.

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Examples:

Advertising

• A rather infuriating example is the notorious Finallyfast.com commercial, which among other terrible things, depicts people happily running Windows-only programs and being foiled by Windows-style hard crashes on Macs... PowerPC Macs that cannot run Windows without emulation. The fact that the program is suspected to be a scam that actually gives you harmful trojan horses just adds insult to injury, or perhaps, injury to insult.

Anime and Manga

• The computers in Death Note are heavily influenced in their design by the contemporary Apple range at the time it was made.
• Inverted in My Youth Romantic Comedy Is Wrong, as I Expected. Hachiman, the protagonist, has something resembling an iPhone...but he's a misanthropic outcast. Everyone else uses flip-phones.
• If a computer appears in the world of Pokémon: The Series (for example, in Pokémon 2000 and also in at least a few TV episodes), chances are it's running the Pokéverse equivalent of Mac OS or Linux OS.
• In Sayonara, Zetsubou-Sensei, Nami expresses a desire to get an iPod for Christmas, and a later episode indicates that she was given one and purchased a Mac computer afterward. Makes sense, since she's normal.
  • Don't Say Normal!
• Besides being a massive Mind Screw, Serial Experiments Lain is notable for having more references to Apple than possibly every other entry on this list combined. The Navi computers are all clearly modeled after Apple products (Alice uses an iMac ripoff, Lain has a machine that resembles the Twentieth Anniversary Mac); their "cell phones" are modeled after the Apple Newton, a primitive attempt in the early 1990s at creating a functional PDA; the catch phrase "Close this world, open the neXt" refers to the NeXT OS, upon which the modern Mac OS was based; hell, the voiceover that reads the title of each episode is the text-to-speech program that comes with every Mac. That's only to start.
  • The "Next Episode" title card used the NeXT capitalization.
  • Even the word "Navi" is speculated to be a shorthand for "Knowledge Navigator", a term a former Apple CEO used to describe computers that functioned primarily as Internet terminals.
  • Think Different
• The main conflict of Summer Wars involves an AI that hacks into a virtual world that controls every corner of the Internet and the world governments. The AI started as an experiment by one of the principle characters, Wabisuke, a professor at Carnegie Mellon University in the United States. ...guess what kind of phone he has. Carnegie Mellon University has a deal with Apple in Real Life, though, dating back past The '80s. Otherwise, this is an aversion; geekier characters—Kenji, his nerd buddy, and Kazuma—all use PCs, and Wabisuke's iPhone is the only one out of a whole lot of flip-phones.

Comic Books

• Subverted in The Boys, in that the computer Billy Butcher uses is very, very clearly a Mac Book, but the illuminated logo on the lid has been altered to... a pear. (see also under Live Action TV, Dirk Gently for the same gag).

Comic Strips

• In Bloom County, resident genius Oliver Wendell Jones owned a Banana Jr. 6000. While its name was also a nod to the PC Junior, its look was taken directly from Macintosh - and when first booted up, it displayed the message "IBM Sucks Silicon."
• The characters of FoxTrot have, possibly, owned Apple computers since day 1. An early storyline had Andy buying a Mac to replace the Apple II that Jason kept hogging playing games (quite literally "a computer for the rest of us"). In the early '90s, this was quietly replaced with an unspecified desktop box that resembled an early Quadra or Performa. Then in 1999, another storyline was dedicated to Andy buying an "iFruit" family computer, specifically to keep Jason from playing PC games. Since then, Jason has been seen using a modern-style iMac. Of course, the creator, Bill Amend, is a huge Mac fan, as is Jason's mother, Andy Fox (a columnist). The strip's geekier characters (Jason, Marcus, Eileen...) clearly aren't.

Film — Animated

• Fantastic Mr. Fox: Even woodland creatures have Macs, or at least ones who are lawyers do. The same kind of computer also showed up in The Royal Tenenbaums, and both movies had a very retro/uncertain time period that made the sleek Macs look a bit jarring.
• Pixar movies are generally given a free pass on this one since that studio was owned by Steve Jobs before merging with Disney, and since then he was a majority shareholder on the Disney board up until his death in 2011, so it's particularly noteworthy that Toy Story 3 actually averts it several times. Only one of the computers shown in the movie is specifically shown to be a Mac, and an outdated one at that. Andy's laptop vaguely resembles a MacBook at best, although it does appear to have a Mac OS menu bar and iTunes is clearly open on screen. The computer at Sunnyside is very obviously a PC running Windows XP.
  • Likely a case of Pixar showing its work, since a day-care center that relies on donated toys wouldn't have the money to spend on a Mac.
  • In Inside Out, we see the imaginary boyfriend use an iPhone when we first meet him, complete with one of its ringtones. Also, Riley owns a cellphone that resembles an iPhone.
  • Soul used the Marimba ringtone during a scene in which Joe is walking through a crowded city street.

Film — Live-Action

• Interestingly, Apple does not allow villain characters to use iPhones in movies, even if they are Villainy-Free or Anti Villains. They still can own iPhones or other Apple products offscreen. This does not extend to nominally Villain Protagonists, as well as majority of Fan Works and other media though.
• All of the computers and technology used in the movie Accepted were from Apple.
• In the finale of Antitrust, the Synapse broadcast is done with a PowerBook G3. It's fitting when you consider how the movie is a feature-length Take That! at Apple's chief rival, but it makes less sense when you remember that the film is about computer hackers (who, as stated above, don't use Macs), and that the Product Placement goes against the film's pro-open source message (Mac OS is hardly open source software). On the other hand, Apple does support open-source development from time to time (it released it's Darwin kernel and Swift compilers as open-source, as well as it's CUPS printing system, which has become the new standard on Linux and BSD machines), and several Mac OS X components (ie Perl, emacs) originated from the open-source community.
• We know from the film Batman & Robin that the Bat-cave's computer is a Mac, it is seen running Mac OS 7 where Alfred's AI (a QuickTime video!) on the computer interacts with his niece.
• Blade: Trinity is practically a two hour long commercial for Apple products.
• Justified when Apple computers are the ones conspicuously seen in The Devil Wears Prada, since they're in Runway's offices, and a real magazine like that would very likely use Apples exclusively.
• The normal guy from Franklyn has a Mac.
• In both the film and the book of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, both Lisbeth and Mikael both use MacBooks. Their expensive prices are part of a plot point. And despite the mid 2000 setting of the story, all of the Apple hardware in the movie is modern (from 2012), despite running software from 2005.
• Rowan Atkinson destroys a poor little iMac in Johnny English.
• Jurassic Park (1993):
  • The park's supercomputer network was based on the Connection Machine CM-5, at the time the badassest of the badass supercomputers (which makes it a sensible choice from a story point of view versus the Crays of the original book), and has vast numbers of Blinkenlights (making it visually awesome and therefore an ideal movie prop). However, Dennis Nedry's terminal runs on a Mac.
  • There's the number of SGI workstations that show up, which was what the production crew used to create the film's CG. The unintentionally hilarious line "It's a Unix system; I know this" comes as the character is looking at a graphical user interface, something Unix is famous for not having; this particular GUI happens to be a real SGI file browser. With SGI's Product Placement in many other movies of this era, this trope could have been called "Everyone Owns an SGI Workstation." Having one on your desk was even more implausible than with Macs of the era, as Unix workstations were usually relegated to scientists, engineers and CGI animators.
• Jeff Goldblum hacked the alien mothership in Independence Day with a Power Book.
  • That same Power Book also had its own Independence Day TV spot. The Power Book was busy that summer.
  • Goldblum would later go on to star in a series of ads for the iMac in 1998.
  • It's at least slightly easier to suspend disbelief in the premise (that this works because he's running a distant derivative of the aliens' secretly reverse-engineered OS) with the Mac than if he has a PC and Windows. Slightly.
  • On the other hand, while he has Mac hardware, it's clearly a custom OS. How he managed that is anyone's guess.
• Lambada (1990) has a schoolroom full of Apple Macintoshes, which isn't that far removed from Real Life until the kids are inspired to rock out by watching a graphics demo on a Mac SE.
• Legally Blonde is an interesting subversion, with Elle's bright orange iBook intentionally contrasting with the sea of slate-grey, presumably Windows-based laptops her fellow law students carry.
• Mission: Impossible (1996) film featured plenty of Macs. The Apple Power Book had its own Mission: Impossible TV spot.
  "After you see the film, you may want to pick up the book."
• The Net (1995): Besides the fact that no hacker worth her salt would be using a Mac in the 1990s, every computer runs Mac OS 8. The scene at the convention center looks like MacWorld.^note Because it was the MacWorld Expo with all the convention-identifying signage taken down.
  • Given that said convention center was explicitly stated to be the Moscone Center, home of MacWorld Expo.
• The Numbers Station: Some Apple hardware is prominently displayed down in the bowels of the numbers station (a government establishment, which one would expect to use Windows). However, when we see the screens they have a custom GUI, and an inserted memory card is seen to have a file path beginning at "C:", in the Windows style.
• Justified in Other Halves, a film about computer programmers. Macs are commonly used by app developers, now.
• Even Shakespearean characters can own Macs, in adaptations set in modern times:
  • In the 2000 film version of Hamlet starring Ethan Hawke, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern have a PowerBook on which Hamlet discovers the order for him to be beheaded saved as a Word document, which he edits so that Rosencrantz and Guildenstern will be executed instead.
  • Ralph Fiennes' 2011 film of Coriolanus shows Coriolanus' son with an iMac in his room, and Coriolanus receiving a Skype call on a MacBook Pro.
• Zoolander may be a subversion, since the computer got smashed.
  • More precisely, the Mac, at the time sold primarily as the computer for people who were bad with computers, was too complicated for Hansel.

Literature

• Artemis Fowl is shown owning only Macs. Until he switches to his own hybrid designs, but even faerie tech feels a bit Mac-like.
• In the Bigend Books by William Gibson:
  • Pattern Recognition has a character who owns an antique Mac G4 Cube. The gentle pulsating of the power lamp when the computer is in sleep mode is apparently quite soothing.
  • Zero History is awash with iPhones, and a character refers to them as "the default platform."
• Spider Robinson loves his Mac, and if a computer shows up in a Callahans story, that's what it will be.
• When personal computers are mentioned in Stephen King novels, they tend to be Apple products.
• Arthur Dent buys an unidentified Apple PC in So Long And Thanks For All The Fish. Douglas Adams was a huge fan of the brand, seeing the iPad as a potential defictionalisation of the titular Guide, and a late 1980s Macintosh SE/30 once owned by him is now a museum exhibit.
• In Young Wizards, Dairine's Wizard's Manual starts out as a phone book–sized portable Apple IIIc (a fictitious hybrid of the Apple IIc and Apple III), but repeatedly upgrades its own hardware until it ends up being a sleek Mac notebook.
  • On the one hand, the computer was substituted for the one Dairine's parents (non-techies) thought they were buying for the family. On the other, the computer's fake-Apple logo (the fruit silhouette without the missing bite) apparently became standard issue. So... yeah.

Live-Action TV

• On 24, the good guys usually use Macs and the villains PCs.
  • For one who knows 24's penchant for putting the product of the company who pays the most (Ford) in the hands of the good guys, it's easy to tell why.
  • Reportedly, 24 uses Macs due to star Kiefer Sutherland being a loyal Mac user and a popular Apple Store customer.
• Everyone on 30 Rock uses Apple products. Jack has an iMac on his desk most of the time and seemingly all the characters carry iPhones. With the possible exception of Jack—who is a high-powered business executive—this makes a certain amount of sense, as (again) 30 Rock is set in the creative industry (specifically television production, and even more specifically NBC. Since the whole series is Tina Fey writing what she knows, it might actually be realistic.
• CBS has a deal with Microsoft for product placement. In the first few years, all laptops were MacBooks with a sticker with the 2001-2012 Windows flag logo placed on them with no tags to make. Both NCIS: LA and Hawaii Five-0 have PixelSense systems. Now we see both Surface tablets and branded MS partner laptops and Windows phones from Nokia. The Hawaii Five-0 Season 4 premiere even got the old PixelSense table shot up so that Chin-Ho could get a more modern model to show off.
• Averted with CSI: NY, where lab work has been seen on laptops with prominent Windows logos.
• In newer seasons of Degrassi, everyone seems to have an iPhone. All five of Canada's major cellular providers have offered them from the start but it's still hard to see how, let's say, KC can afford one.
• Every laptop in Dexter seems to be a Macbook. All the software is sort of generic, though.
• Subverted in the BBC mini-series Dirk Gently, in that the computers that Dirk and Mac Duff use are both very, very clearly MacBooks, but the illuminated logo on the lid has been altered to... a pear. (Notable also because Douglas Adams, the creator of the character, was the first person in the UK to own a Macintosh and worked for Apple for many years as an evangelist for their technology).
• Mac laptops have shown up from time to time in the revived Doctor Who, and Mac keyboards are used more often than not whenever a prop keyboard is required. The BBC would seem to like it some Macs.
• Fuller House appears to be primarily sponsored by Apple, given how Apple products run rampant in the show. But most notably, Macs are often seen in the show- with the fifth episode proudly showing Facetime running on a Macbook, and Stephanie's laptop being shown to be a Macbook with the signature glowing Apple logo on the back of the LCD panel.
  • The parent series Full House did show that DJ had a Mac Plus in her room, though she very rarely (if ever) used it.
• Glee: The computer on which Finn watches the sonogram is a Mac. Even more annoying when you realize that their family is middle- to lower-middle-class.
• After the first few episodes of the reimagined Hawaii Five-0 suggested the series was going with this, it was averted thanks to a very generous sponsorship by Microsoft (so generous that the characters were using Windows Phone and doing searches with Bing!)
• In House of Cards (US), the government and media appear to run exclusively on iPhones, iPads, and Macintoshes, with Frank's Blackberry being the only notable exception. This is interesting as the real government is very heavily reliant on Windows, usually two or three versions out-of-date.
• Averted in How I Met Your Mother in Subway Wars, in which Ted has a laptop with a Windows logo on the lid. Otherwise, in every other episode, all their computers look suspiciously Mac-like.
• iCarly does the same thing as So Damn Bright, below. Also, if the product is named in dialogue, they'll stick "pear" in the name somewhere—e.g., PearPod, PearPhone, or iPear.
  • As do all of the other shows created by Dan Schneider. But it originated on Drake & Josh
  • And if they show an antagonist, such as Nevel, using aforementioned devices, don't expect them to have a PearPhone, PearPod etc..
• Every single computer appearing in Kamen Rider Ryuki is Apple, more prominently the desktops in the Ore Journal office, which are all iMac G3s.
• Everyone in Kingdom (2007) uses a Mac. This may be due to star Stephen Fry's well-known real life love for Apple products and his status as the UK's second-ever Mac owner (Douglas Adams was first.)
• The characters on Law & Order: Special Victims Unit have taken to carrying around iPhones and iPads.
• While early seasons of Leverage were guilty of this, with various Mac products used for Hollywood Hacking, the later seasons have started to grow out of it. In the later seasons, the team's headquarters has a large, fancy touch screen computer with a quite obvious Windows 7 desktop wallpaper.
• The Marvel Netflix shows features this in spades.
  • In the shows that came out prior to The Defenders (2017), everyone uses whatever the latest model of Samsung Galaxy phone was out when that show was filmed. In Daredevil (2015), Matt Murdock, Karen Page, Foggy Nelson, Wilson Fisk, James Wesley and other characters all seem to use Galaxy S4s or S5s. In Jessica Jones (2015), Jessica uses a Galaxy S5. In Iron Fist (2017), Danny Rand and Ward Meachum have Galaxy S7s. In The Defenders (2017), Karen Page uses a Galaxy S7 Edge, as does Dinah Madani in The Punisher (2017). There are rare exceptions like Misty Knight, who is an iPhone user.
  • In those that came out after The Punisher season 1, everyone uses an iPhone. In Jessica Jones, Jessica and Trish use iPhone 7s, with Jessica's being the jet black variant, and Trish's being the silver version. Malcolm uses a space gray Macbook, as does Jeri Hogarth (Trish uses a Windows laptop, though). In Luke Cage season 2, Luke, Misty, and Mariah utilize iPhones. In Iron Fist season 2, Danny Rand and Ward Meachum each own an iPhone X. In Daredevil season 3, Karen is now using an iPhone 7, Foggy now uses an iPhone X, and Ben Donovan uses an iPhone 7 Plus. Ray Nadeem appears to be using a Samsung Galaxy S9 to film his death confession.
• In at least season 2 of Monk, it seems like most of the laptops at the police station are Macs.
• All of the computers in Nikita are Macs. Though, in this case, it's likely that Birkhoff likes Macs and has them standard for all of Division, and Nikita uses one because she needs s computer that is compatible with the shell program she wrote.
• Many Macs on The Office (US). One episode's b-plot revolved around the receptionist desk getting a new computer (an iMac), and video conferencing via MacBook Pro has happened too many times to count. On the other hand, Dunder-Mifflin desk computers all seem to be PCs.
• The commentary for the season 1 DVD of Peep Show specifically notes averting this trope, despite pressure from the art department to put in a Mac simply because it looks more attractive. Ironically, the stars, Mitchell and Webb, also do the UK version of Apple's "I'm a Mac / I'm A PC" campaign.
  • Fittingly it was Mitchell (who plays the I'm a PC to Webb's I'm A Mac) who made the comments on the commentary. He also noted disapprovingly about about their previous show The Mitchell And Webb Situation using this trope on the commentary to that show.
• JD looks up info on a patient on a Macbook on Scrubs. Although it makes sense for a doctor recently out of med school would have one, more likely a few years old.
  • Another episode features Kelso squandering hospital money on a fancy iMac G4, whose price is compared to that of sophisticated hospital imaging devices.
• On Seinfeld, a Mac could usually be seen on the desk in Jerry's apartment. It got upgraded from time to time, too.
  • Actually possibly a justifiable representation, i.e. not this trope, because as a reasonably well-off "creative" type (a standup comedian) Jerry is exactly the sort of person who you'd expect to own a Mac at that time.
• In Spooks, The BBC was forced to cover up the Apple logo on the cast laptops due to viewer complaints that it violated product placement rules.
• Averted quite a bit by the Stargate-verse, where Dells are the most common systems (as with the real-life US military), along with the occasional NEC.
• Superhuman Samurai Syber-Squad: Everyone Owns A Compaq. Almost certainly not a Product Placement deal, not for a Follow the Leader job on Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers on even more of a shoestring budget. In The '90s Compaq were a big name in corporate IT, a lot like Dell are now, and sold their hardware in bulk. Chances are the showrunners simply called the helpdesk number and asked if they could borrow a few spare workstations for filming.
• Ted Lasso: Being an Apple TV+ show, the characters are regularly seen texting and calling on iPhones and tapping away on their Macbooks, often with the Apple logo visible. Additionally, one shot of the last episode sees Ted pay for magazines in an airport with Apple Pay.
• In True Blood, all the Chancellors of the Authority use MacBooks. Given that they're hundreds or thousands of years old, and all rich and decadent, it makes a sort of sense, but these are basically almost the only computers ever seen in the show.
• Two and a Half Men has computer wiz Walden use an iMac, ostensibly replacing Charlie's piano. Interestingly enough, the computer seems to run Linux (which is doable, but very rare for a plethora of reasons).
• Seong-moo's art studio in the Korean series W Two Worlds runs on iMacs and Mac Books, complete with Apple keyboards and mice.

Video Games

• Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots has everyone use Macs. It actually came out of the fact that Konami didn't want to use a generic MP3 player and asked Apple if they could use the iPod. Snake even gets to equip an iPod with a wide selection of tunes found strewn across the levels or unlocked with the password feature, many of them from older titles in the series and some new ones.
• In Safe Cracker, the Crabb & Sons Safe company has Macintosh desktops all around their corporate headquarters, and ones the player can interact with show System 7.5 desktops - one of which has a clone of Minesweeper.

Webcomics

• Applegeeks. The title alone makes it pretty dang clear, plus the author is a gigantic Mac fanboy who likes insulting Windows whenever it comes up.
• The consoles used by the Exiles in Homestuck all have Apple Keyboards.
• Piro in MegaTokyo has one, but considering the sheer number of computers in the house, it's probably justified. Or maybe he bought it for its incompatibility with Largo's junk...
• In So Damn Bright, Never's computer has a pear logo on it. Just like the Apple logo, but with a pear instead of an apple.
• Unwinder from Unwinder's Tall Comics has a Mac laptop. However, the author of the comic actually uses a Windows PC.

Web Original

• In the TV Tropes original Web series Echo Chamber, Tom and Dana have both been shown using Mac laptops, and the room where they speak to Mr. Administrator is full of Mac desktops.
• Homestar Runner: Strong Sad owns an iPod, while The Cheat makes all of his crappy Flash animations on some type of iMac (using later models in later cartoons). This is in contrast to Strong Bad's predilection for ridiculously outdated PCs, some of which strictly use a command line interface.

Web Video

• Economy Watch: David and Dennis own Macs, and the show is mainly made with Apple software.
• Scott The Woz: Scott owns a Mac and the show is edited with Final Cut Pro X.

Western Animation

• Steve in American Dad! has a Mac in his bedroom.
  • As does Rallo in The Cleveland Show. Not bad going for a 5-year old!
• In King of the Hill, right around the turn of the millennium, Hank upgrades Peggy Hill's 80s-era Kaypro to a blueberry iMac.
• Every computer seen on Littlest Pet Shop (2012) is a MacBook, only with the Apple logo replaced with a circle. Desktop computers have yet to be seen.
• Macs are fairly prominent on The Simpsons, usually coming from "Mapple", although Apple Computer has occasionally been mentioned over the years.
  • It goes as far back as in "Homer Defined" from Season 3, when the Springfield Nuclear Power Plant is close to a meltdown and the employees begin looting, one of them is seen with a Macintosh SE all-in-one desktop.)
  • Whenever one of the family is using a desktop, it appears to be an iMac with a colored casing. In many earlier cases, it's based off an iMac G3, which often came in color casings, but in more recent seasons the iMacs are based off flat panel designs.
  • In Season 7's "Homer the Smithers," Waylon Smithers is shown to be using an early 90s-style Mac desktop.
  • In recent seasons, Lisa is often shown to have her own flat-panel iMac desktop computer in her room.
  • In "The D'oh-cial Network", Springfield Elementary's computer lab is shown to still be using colored iMac G3s and Apple Lisa desktops.
  • In "Yellow Subterfuge," Bart can be seen at one point using Pro Movie on a laptop, which is a parody of Apple's Final Cut Pro video-editing software.
  • In many cases since the late 90s when a computer operating system is shown, it's usually based off Mac OS 8 or OS 9. This continued even long after Apple actually dropped support for Mac OS 9 in 2002, although recent seasons have often shown an operating system resembling the modern Mac OS being used.
• In later seasons of South Park, nearly every time a character uses a computer, it's an iMac.
  • Parodied in HUMANCENTiPAD. Everybody, apart from Gerald, seems to use a Mac. Apple, it seems, has control of everybody and what they can do with them. Kyle gets it pretty bad.

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