[SamBam]

> The "pro" market is not big, its probably not growing

Not sure I agree with that, when we're teaching everybody and their grandparents how to program, in order to compete in the "new economy."

Doubly-so for developing countries.

I would hope that the proportion of developers in the world should be increasing.

[ubernostrum]

The real issue is that your conception of "pro" is off. The "pro" users Apple traditionally targeted were not software developers. Their laptops became popular among developers not because of the hardware, but because of a quirk of Apple's corporate history which led to OS X being a Unix under the hood, which in turn meant it was a computer you could do all your developer-y things on without the living hell of trying to run Linux as your desktop OS.

[micaksica]

I agree with your statement, however, running Linux as a desktop OS is definitely not that bad anymore.

[adamlett]

We may be talking about different things. I was talking specifically about laptops that are directly comparable with Apple's pro line (i.e. expensive). I seems doubtful that the market for expensive laptops will find much growth in the developing world.

Even if it should prove true that the proportion of high end users is expanding relative to the entire market, it will still just be a bigger slice of a smaller pie. The PC market has been declining for quite some time. That doesn't mean that there will not still be lucrative niches within that market, but does Google really strike you as a company that would or should go for a niche in a contracting market?

[sosborn]

Developers are but a small portion of "pro." Also, the stuff being taught to everybody and their grandparents would do fine on 10-year-old netbooks.

[mixmastamyk]

Indeed, I learned CS on a 486 and the code I wrote ran mind-bogglingly fast on a Pentium.