[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"