What, you've never heard of the Atari 7800? It was an 8-bit video game system that nobody cared about because Nintendo's NES was unquestionably superior. If you were playing video games in North America during the 8-bit era, you were only playing Nintendo -- almost no one owned an Atari 7800, and even fewer owned a Sega Master System. Indeed, Atari sued Nintendo for monopolizing the market (and lost).
At the time, Nintendo commanded a roughly 80% market share compared to Atari's 12% share. And given how invisible the 7800 was, that 12% must have been concentrated in about 1% of the market's audience, likely obese geeks with one in every room to obviate the need to walk 20 paces to play it.
Compare this to the Macintosh computers today -- they're so ubiquitous that they account for a little less than 8% of the market. Again considering the tendency of Mac zombies to place one in front of each window of their house so that no one will miss the Apple logo when they drive by, it's probably only 5% of the audience who owns one. So there you have it -- they're not quite as popular as a shitty video game system.
The reason for this misperception is the availability bias, whereby we think something is more common than it truly is if we can more easily think of examples of it. People who think at all about technology tend to be of higher status, and this makes their social circle much more likely to own an expensive Mac. Not so for the larger public, whose own tacky ethnic markers are more affordable things like sports team jerseys and Jesus fish bumper stickers.
In addition to the availability bias, isn't the fact that Macs are a luxury good also at play?
ReplyDeletePeople tend to be more aware of luxury goods than non luxury items.
Mac envy is never pretty.
ReplyDeleteMac delusion, more like it.
ReplyDeleteMacs truly are a status symbol for SWPLs. They are so inorodinately proud of using a particular lap top above all others, as if its saving the world from -something-. I can't remember what blogger mentioned it, but having a Mac laptop at a coffee shop sort of "announces" that you have the correct (that is, politically correct) social views on all the hot topics of the day. They may indeed be a better computer, but they are not worth the extra money one pays for them.
ReplyDeleteIn my personal experience, there are two distinct types of Mac users.
ReplyDeleteOn one hand, there are people who truly prefer Macs for either technical or familiarity reasons, and/or because they truly believe Mac's are more reliable and a better value (I'm not suggesting these views are not debatable, rather that THESE people prefer Macs as an article of faith - they are the Apple true believers).
Then there are the "other" type of Mac users. Those arrogant pricks who believe that using a Mac suggests that they, personally, are superior to others. These are the ones who tend to make everyone else hate Mac's.
I cannot even suggest what percentage of Mac users these type constitute of the total number of Mac users, but it seems quite evident that they are prevalent enough to have created the general impression that Macintosh's are the computer choice of narcissistic arrogant assholes world-wide.
Note - there was once a third category of Mac users - those who were simply anti-MicroSoft. But now that Apple has been sleeping with MicroSoft on the side for many years now, those difiate ones have gravitated towards Linux/open source as their computing preference.
I see Mac users as non conformists, as well as microsoft haters. Maybe some brand loyalty with a little bit of just plain habit, too. If you have bought macs for 25 years, you will probably buy another. I never saw macs as cool, just the opposite, more nerdy. I remember the old Vax and PDP lovers seemed to be more of mac lovers, too.
ReplyDeleteI am not a mac guy, but what the fuck are you talking about?
ReplyDeleteApple's share was only 4% a few years ago. They've doubled since then.
Wow, and the leader (two recently merged companies) has 18% market share, OMG end of mac!
What is Apple's share in the home market? Academic market? Graphic design market? Huge.
What is Apple's share of MP3 players, phones, and music downloads? 95%?
We're talking about Macs, not any Apple product. Obviously the point is not about Dell vs. HP vs. Mac, but those geared towards Windows or the Mac operating system.
ReplyDeleteThis is even clearer for which OS is used to access Google:
Market share
That's from 2004, no recent data. But since the Mac had about a 2-3% market share in computers, it looks like Google's traffic closely reflects the OS's market share.
So today that would mean about 7-8% using Mac OS and 85% or more using some version of Windows.
OK, more recent data from May 2009:
ReplyDeleteMarket share
Macs at 10%, Windows at 88%.
I still don't see your point.
ReplyDeleteWindows is king and always will be*
Apple has done extremely well in the last five years with mac. Huge sales and profit increases. Microsoft has done terribly with the release of Vista.
Why disparage Apple?
*until Google makes the OS irrelevant.
sg - "I see Mac users as non conformists, as well as microsoft haters."
ReplyDeleteWhile this was once true, it reflects the standpoint of very few of today's Macintosh users. Now, Mac users are nothing if not conformist, especially wrt their socio-political standpoint (The anonymous commenter at 6;24 AM covered this nicely).
Seems to me that the self-espoused MS haters in the Mac crowd are generally against any and all big & multi-national corporate enterprises (not just MS). The irony that Apple now uses MS software products (Office) to leverage Mac sales is utterly lost on these sorts.
Now-a-days, the non-conformists and MicroSoft haters almost always seem to prefer Linux and open-source software - despite the "buggy-ness".
sg - "Maybe some brand loyalty with a little bit of just plain habit, too. If you have bought macs for 25 years, you will probably buy another."
Yes, brand loyalty is quite high amongst many Mac users - but the increase from 4% of the market to 10%+ is mostly from those seeking the perceived status gains from being Mac users. And, as I implied earlier, as with most status-seekers, these people tend to be insufferable a-holes - and thereby bring down the perception of ALL Mac users in the process.
The hatred of Mac's is actually (in an overwhelming majority of cases) is actually contempt for the obnoxious braggadocio and self-aggrandizement of those more recent Mac converts being projected onto the machines. When you get right down to it, most of the Mac-haters acknowledge that the Mac's are good computers, and they tend to focus in on issues such as pricing vs. performance - unless "pressed", in which case they invariably confess to knowing one or more insufferable pricks who make a huge deal out of owning Macs, as the "REAL" reason they hate Macs.
The point is to show that Macs' perceived popularity or dominance isn't true, and to suggest a reason why people believe Macs are more popular than they really are.
ReplyDeleteAnd in the link in the post to market share data, you can see that Macs actually stagnated or slightly declined during 2008, so their period of growth is done for now.
The hatred of Mac's is actually (in an overwhelming majority of cases) is actually contempt for the obnoxious braggadocio and self-aggrandizement of those more recent Mac converts being projected onto the machines.
ReplyDeleteRight. I don't hate marijuana plants -- I hate potheads.
Since I have been around longer than personal computers, and remember the trash80's etc., I find it fascinating that people see computer choice through the lens of who else is buying them and whether they are nice etc. We old folk figured that since businesses bought huge numbers of the original IBM pc's because they were in the habit of buying from IBM, that kind of sealed it for Apple. Apple was a consumer rather than a business product. Then in the consumer market, people just bought computers similar to what they had at work. I remember talking to a guy who bought a pc and didn't know anything about it but just left in the box for a couple of months. That was in late 80's maybe early 90's.
ReplyDeleteI also find it interesting that there was ever a perception by anyone that macs are popular.
Actually, you are probably closer to the truth with "...considering the tendency of Mac zombies to place one in front of each window of their house so that no one will miss the Apple logo..." because we Zombies get two Apple logo stickers to stick somewhere.
ReplyDeleteSeeing how we already have a spiffy, built-in, glowing Apple logo which announces to all with functioning eyes, our status and our "non-conformist" ways on our machine's lid, the defacto placement of said stickers is negated.
I'd like to know if there is any correlation with claims of the theft of these status symbols (both from house/work and car) and the placement of those stickers.
"The point is to show that Macs' perceived popularity or dominance isn't true, and to suggest a reason why people believe Macs are more popular than they really are."
ReplyDeleteRight, but who really thinks that? I don't know anyone who thinks Apple is the dominant force in computing.
I think you need to validate your assumption. It would be much more difficult, and interesting, to quantify perceived popularity, not actual market share.
As a kid, I had an Atari 7800 system - it was good but certainly not great. I seem to remember that the main alternatives were the last wave of Intellivsion, and the peaking of ColecoVision. My dim childhood memory places the rise of Nintendo as occurring after the Atari 7800 was established as a failed platform.
ReplyDeleteYMMV, since I'm just going on vague impressions from childhood.
Ack, after a bit of googling, i realize it was the Atari 5200, not the 7800 that was a competitor with Intellivision and Coleco.
ReplyDelete