Sneaky Bastard

I often see people refer to an Apple Macintosh computer as a “MAC” in all capitals, such as in the following example:

Somebody says that they can’t see this page with a MAC. Can somebody with a MAC test it for me?

I have collected a list of reasons that might explain why a person refers to a Macintosh in this way:

• They think that “MAC” is an acronym in the same way that PC is. What it’s an acronym for, I can’t be sure. Perhaps “Macintosh Apple Computer.” Well that’s a bit redundant now, isn’t it?
• They are yelling the abbreviated form of the word. It’s likely that they’ll append multiple exclamation points to the end of that sentence too.
• The instance of “MAC” appears in a software catalog as in “Versions: PC/MAC” on a product description page. The only possible explanation for this is that the catalog was designed using Microsoft Publisher, and that product doesn’t allow mixed-case characters in a display field.
• They relate three letter abbreviations to the three letter filename extensions they must use in Microsoft DOS. Since filenames are always uppercase, it seems reasonable to have “MAC” represent Macintosh as “WPD” would represent Word Perfect Document in the filename PRODCATA.WPD

If you know of any other possible explanations, I’d be happy to hear them.