As fans of spaghetti westerns will testify, the bad guys always ride mean-looking horses and wear a black Stetson. The good guys, on the other hand, wear nice clean clothes and a white hat. Thatis just the way it is. Modern TV writers have moved beyond these obvious clues, though, so todayis viewers need to rely on something else to get the hint.

The Fox networkis thriller series "24" revolves around a plot to assassinate a senator, with the 24-episode season following Secret Service agent Jack Bauer (Kiefer Sutherland) and his team through all 24 hours of the day that the assassination is to take place. Observer Dean Browell spotted Macs from the showis pilot episode, back in November:

The bad guy (assassin) uses a PC, but Kiefer and Co. use all Macs emblazoned with visible Apple symbols. Everything from Apple LCDis to TiBooks, to Cubes, to G4s, to older iBooks... Very cool and very visible.

The very fact that Macs get high-profile use in this show is great in itself - but wait, thereis more. With recent episodes showing thereis a traitor in their midst and the clock ticking, the team had to find out whois wearing the black Stetson. She was finally outed, and Dean wrote back to us this week to let us know that the mole could easily be identified by her... Wintel machine?!

The character Jamey, at the center of a huge subplot, was the only one that used a PC out of the possible suspects- and it turned out she was the traitor in the camp (and in the case of Jamey, her PC using was the only clear signal from the first episode that she would turn on everyone).

Surprised? Thought not. Dean continues:

Are the creators giving us real clues with this? They certainly have so far in the series. In the most recent episode, a new secondary character brought in to run the Mac-filled office and postured as a real pain-in-the-ass, uses a Dell.

Suspicion! Drama! Excitement! Oh yeah, and I hear the actual storylineis not too bad either. You can catch i24i on Fox at 9pm Tuesdays. Thanks, Dean!

Seen a Mac in the media lately? Share the fun - pass the popcorn and drop me a line!