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Macs last longer than Windows PCs and don't need replacing as often. So Mac users aren't ever going to buy new computers at the rate hapless Windows users do.
 technofile
Al Fasoldt's reviews and commentaries, continuously available online since 1983

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The Mac numbers game: Don't believe what Windows bigots tell you


March 31, 2004


By Al Fasoldt
Copyright © 2004, Al Fasoldt
Copyright © 2004, The Post-Standard

   Try this on for size: Your neighbor drives home with his new BMW and the first thing you say to him is a wisecrack about his car's low market share.
   You'd never do it. Nobody would. Most people drive Toyotas or Hondas or Fords, but that means nothing to the people who own BMWs.
   Right?
   Then why are we constantly hearing about the Mac's low market share from people who ought to know better? I spent an evening checking out the actual percentage of Mac users, and I found numbers that ranged from 1.7 percent to 12 percent. That's a huge range, and the imprecision of the numbers tells a story in itself.
   Comparing a free-market product to a monopoly product that's forced on consumers is a difficult task. Many potential buyers have no idea that they have a choice of operating systems and platforms -- they walk into a computer store at the mall and buy what's there, and that means in most cases they buy a Windows PC.
   Microsoft's monopoly needs no elaboration. The company tries hard to make consumers think about "experience" and not about operating systems. (In the current version of Windows, the "XP" stands for "eXPerience," and that's all.) By getting consumers away from the idea of an operating system, Microsoft has been trying to keep consumers from realizing they have a choice of operating systems.
   So the numbers for Mac users are guaranteed to be lower than they would be in a competitive marketplace because the Microsoft monopoly is so pervasive.
   Now that we've got that out of the way, let's look at numbers. Apple's global share in the market for new computers hit a low of 1.7 percent in 2003. The 2004 numbers are likely to be a little better, but not much.
   Yet my own rough calculations indicate that 8 percent of the personal computers used today in homes -- leaving out all the computers used in offices and businesses -- are Apple Macintoshes. Others have said my number is conservative; I've seen the total for Macs in home use as high as 12 percent.
   How can we have 1.7 percent in one case and 8 to 12 percent in another? It's simple: People who represent the Windows side of the computer industry look out one door and Mac fans look out another.
   For example, the 2003 figure of 1.7 percent counts only the number of new computers sold month by month. It does not count the number of computers that are in use. You don't have to be a genius to realize the fallacy of this sort of statistic. Macs last longer than Windows PCs and don't need replacing as often. So Mac users aren't ever going to buy new computers at the same rate as Windows users.
   (If you and I both sell our own widgets but yours last five times as long as mine, I'd have to sell five times as many as you do just to keep the same market share. Do you see the fallacy here?)
   The figure of 8 percent is more honest. It represents the number of Macintosh computers currently in use. Even Apple's own numbers for OS X computers is underestimated, from what I can tell. Apple said earlier this year that there were 25 million OS X users, but the total probably is closer to 35 million by now, after you correct for Apple's low estimate and add in the number of new users in the last few months.
   As for the 12 percent number, I feel it's probably a huge overestimate. But its probably quite accurate if you consider the percentage of Mac users among so-called "knowledge workers" -- among people who think about what they do and care about how things work. A famous Apple advertisement summed this up nicely. Here are some excerpts:
   
Here's to the crazy ones.... The round pegs in the square holes. The ones who see things differently.... You can praise them, disagree with them, quote them, disbelieve them, glorify or vilify them. About the only thing you can't do is ignore them. Because they change things.
   
Maybe they have to be crazy. How else can you stare at an empty canvas and see a work of art? Or sit in silence and hear a song that's never been written? Or gaze at a red planet and see a laboratory on wheels?
   
We make tools for these kinds of people. While some see them as the crazy ones, we see genius.
   
Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world are the ones who do.