[unnouinceput]

Quote: "Microsoft was developing Windows XP during an era when there was fierce competition with Apple over desktop operating systems"

I'm sorry, what? Talk about joke of the week. Apple never had desktop world bigger than 10% as market share. Not even today when it's at the highest peak ever, and in 2001 they were more like 1%. Sorry to burst your bubble Tom Warren, you do realize US is like 35 people out of 800. Asia market was and still is dominated by Microsoft when it comes to desktop.

[marbletiles]

OK, here are the receipts: internal MS emails from just a couple of years after this (in the run-up to Vista) literally saying that they expect to be compared to Tiger and found wanting:

https://www.crn.com/news/applications-os/197001811/microsoft...

Marketshare isn’t everything. You can have outsized mindshare with a tiny market share. You can compete for more than marketshare, too

[spideymans]

iOS and Android demonstrate pretty succinctly that market share isn’t everything with regards to competition and market success.

[oblio]

Yeah, but Windows never had the money problem Android has. Windows had at least the same amount of money spinning on top of it, due to the sheer amount of enterprise apps, especially financial ones, running on top of it.

Android is basically a loss leader for Google ads :-)

[dboreham]

Perhaps he means "in the Bay Area"?

[qz2]

That's about right. Here in the UK you were lucky to see a mac ever back then. A colleague bought the lamp style iMac unit in 2002 and we were quite frankly shocked at it. It was actually a pretty horrid machine compared to our windows 2000 PCs at the time.

[acdha]

There’s an important distinction between what people bought for themselves and what they were given at work. Apple had a big lead on a quality GUI, and things like color matching, which made them preferred in certain fields and generally had more of a premium cachet (the PC market was still shaking the low-end image of things sold without sound cards, slacking on USB adoption, shoddy drivers, etc.).

Microsoft was shooting for 100% market share and was trying to close every niche keeping Apple alive even if the inertia of all of those business sales meant their total market share was never in question.

[rbanffy]

> Apple never had desktop world bigger than 10% as market share.

And that would make Apple the single largest PC manufacturer.

[Zenst]

Depends upon how you define Personal Computer and what time-frame you look at.

So if you define a personal computer as a computer people use for personal tasks as a tool, then a mobile phone fits that. In that definition and if you look at all the years history wise, It does look like Nokia have sold the most computers for personal use. At least going by the numbers sold per manufacturer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best-selling_mobile_ph... and mobiles selling way more than other forms of computers.

[laumars]

Smart phones are not personal computers and the kind of dumb phones around in that year weren’t even smart enough to be computing devices. My phone back then was “amazing” because it had an inbuilt FM tuner AND supported custom ring tones (think PC speaker quality rather than MP3s). I think I could store a maximum of 50 text messages too and that felt like a lot.

It’s sometimes hard to believe how young smart phones (and in fact portable mobile phones in general) are by just how much we now depend on them and take them for granted.

[ko9000]

the big three have been Lenovo, HP and Dell for a long time, order of those has switched sometimes. so depending how you slice the share, you could find a niche where somehow it would appear as whatever you want it to be, usual thing when reporting market shares: "we are top in this is super-niche slice of the overall market"

[qz2]

They'd have to ship just over twice that to touch Lenovo now.

[Fnoord]

It is untrue. Microsoft kept Internet Explorer and Office for macOS. MacOS was Microsoft's joker card for arguing they were not a monopolist, and that card was valid when they were under antitrust investigations by US, EU, and others ie. when Windows XP was current.

[wyldfire]

Market share is often measured in both units and sales (or 'dollars'). Both of these are important to a company's future but when markets are segmented then the smaller number of units can be worth pursuing.

[marbletiles]

Think of it as "rivalry", perhaps. Think of a mass-market car company that outsells a luxury brands 5x or 10x but whose designers still swipe ideas from them.

[unnouinceput]

Rivalry? In 2001? When only 2 years earlier Billy boy had to buy Apple's shares to keep them afloat? I know Billy boy did that to get off the hook with US govt., not like he was any saint - but from that to "rivalry" is a tall order.

[jeromegv]

You seem to have a beef with Apple but regardless of the difficulties of the company in the 90s, it was still a hugely influential company that popularized GUI interfaces and for sure was well known by engineers and designers of other operating systems.

[unnouinceput]

You missed my point. I have a beef with all of them. In my eyes they are all shitty companies, past and present included.

[sokoloff]

“Billy boy” adds nothing and IMO detracts from what is otherwise a good point.

[milutinovici]

Yes, please use William man

[scarface74]

Well, that’s also not true.

Microsoft invested a grand total of $250 million in Apple. Apple turned around during that same quarter and spent $100 million on Power Computings Mac license. Apple didn’t become profitable until years later. The $150 wouldn’t have saved Apple.

[chrisseaton]

> Apple never had desktop world bigger than 10% as market share.

Right but you can differentiate markets.

Apple may be 10% worldwide, including Asian markets like India.

But what is the market for affluent and influential tech workers in the West? Probably like 95% MacBook Pro.

Which market do you think they care more about?

[ChuckNorris89]

>But what is the market for affluent and influential tech workers in the West? Probably like 95% MacBook Pro.

I'm also dev in the West and no, it's not even close to being 95% MacBook Pro. Maybe in The Bay Area it's 95% but where I live(Europe) It's mostly Windows 10 + WSL or Ubuntu.

And I wouldn't call tech workers here as influential, not at all. Again, Maybe in the Bay Area they are but here nobody cares about what your job is or what expensive laptop you have.

[moron4hire]

Logging in from DC here: also not 95% macbooks. This is a common trope that really bothers me. You'll see it in tech meetups where someone will have their turn to talk/present in the group and will apologize for running Windows.

[chrisseaton]

I live in Europe myself and it's MacBook Pros where I live. And I go to conferences all around the world and all I see is MacBook Pros everywhere.

> And I wouldn't call tech workers here as influential, not at all.

Tech works who influence other tech workers. This is important because if everyone you see speaking at conferences is using a MacBook, and all the software available is for MacBooks, then other people are pushed to use MacBooks.

[ChuckNorris89]

By Europe I meant continental Europe, no the UK. The UK is heavily US influenced so there it's more popular.

And by devs I mean all SW devs, not just Web Devs who seem to heavily favor Macs.

Conferences are not relevant as they mostly draw huge enthusiasts/geeks of various niches who are very self conscious about their perceived status there(since you go there to network) and don't want to be judged by their high-value peers for using the wrong machine(yes, some developers can be very superficial and judgmental; we're not saints). It's like saying Everyone in my area owns fancy cars because every time I go to the regional car show I only see exotics.

Also, the Macs or no Macs is a very regional/company thing varying greatly between country/city/company.

For example, in Germany I never saw Macs at big industry giants, just Windows/Linux machines as the bean counters couldn't justify to management the extra cost when the same work could be done on a Lenovo with Ubuntu.

Anyway, Europe as a whole is by no means like the Bay Area in terms of Mac adoption.

[eyko]

I'm from continental europe but live in the UK now. I've never counted but Macs have always been very present (rough guess would be 50/50 split back home), but here in the UK, or London specifically, I can probably count devs with PCs that I know with both hands. It definitely is very US influenced here, but we still have to keep in mind that we live in a tech bubble so representation is a bit skewed. I also see lots of Linux running on Lenovos and Dells, especially devs and IT folks, but to be honest, when you look at actual global stats, Linux is 1-2% of the overall European market share[1], and just above 2% when you only count for desktop[2], with macOS around 10% and 20% respectively.

Macs right now are seen everywhere. Literally everywhere in any large city, you'll see Macs in cafes and offices. This means that the 20% desktop market share that they enjoy at the moment is probably the highest it has ever been. I remember back in the 2000s, having a Mac was quite rare in Europe. It was also for the most part a nuisance (same as running Linux) when you had to download windows-specific software or maybe use IE specific websites for work or government related things. Anyone who says that it was an even fight back in the 2000s or earlier either doesn't know what they're talking about or has come from a alternate reality.

1. https://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share/all/europe 2. https://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share/desktop/europe

[pedrosorio]

> Conferences are not relevant as they mostly draw huge enthusiasts/geeks of various niches who are very self conscious

This doesn’t sound like a fair rebuttal to me.

> as the bean counters couldn't justify to management the extra cost

This is the simple explanation for why people don’t use Macs, and reflects a key difference between the tech industry in the US (Bay Area in particular) and Europe.

[jack_pp]

Enthusiasts that consider Linux plebian over Macs? You mean fanboys.

I consider myself much more elite with my 500$ refurb thinkpad running Linux with i3 than anyone I would ever see owning a Mac. And it's far easier to show off with a machine only very few even know how to use.

[RBerenguel]

I think I have only met one person using Windows for development (recently-ish). All people I know in UK, Spain, France, Germany, and Italy are either Mac or Linux.

Edit: added UK

[anthk]

I live in Spain and the rest of Europe is not like the UK at all.

[schwinn140]

My data does not support that conclusion. To the contrary, the vast majority of business decision makers are still on a Windows based machine in the US.

I can validate this directly as we operate the largest library of long-form professional/technical content library on the web. Over 700k professionals per month are registering and downloading content specific to their needs.

Below is the current breakout of their device factor for 2020:

Windows = 97.26% Mac = 8.21% Linux 2.92% Chrome OS = 0.27%

Clearly just one perspective into the market but we've never seen Mac approach any level of critical mass within the US professional marketplace.

[ko9000]

and that means desktop devices, not servers, embedded or smartphones: not overall shares. common error is picking one slice of the share and claiming it as something else.

[vaidhy]

Numbers do not add up. Maybe Windows is more like 90%?

[fuzzfactor]

>Windows = 97.26% Mac = 8.21% Linux 2.92% Chrome OS = 0.27%

Roger, data seems to already show more than 100 percent of registrees are using personal-style computers?

[amalcon]

> But what is the market for affluent and influential tech workers in the West? Probably like 95% MacBook Pro.

Not in the late 1990s, when Windows XP was being developed.

[ksec]

>Apple may be 10% worldwide, including Asian markets like India.

Well in 2000 there wasn't much computer in China or India.

Of course today that is a lot different. But if Apple's numbers were correct [] then MacBook Pro market share isn't growing, as a matter of fact MBP usage may be shrinking in the West.

[] For a number of years they claim nearly 50% of Mac buyers are new to the platform. That is nearly 10M per year.

Nearly all of the new Mac users are from China.

And yet their reported Active Mac User dont grow any where near as much.

2019 was also the first year in recent history Apple stopped reporting on Mac user satisfaction.

[fortran77]

It depends what you mean by "influential"