| From the stats I could gather I really doubt macOS market share increased substantially in usage. What I think happened is that they doubled their usual sales figures. Which is unsurprising if you look at the buildup of not-so-great hardware they release post-2015 before AS. Their machines had annoyances and were very uncompetitive with comparable offering because of soldered RAM/SSD pricing. Then they released AS and the first round of hardware looked competitive because at least they seemed to have something different, a real advantage worth paying more. At least that was the marketing.
I believe it got many to update very old hardware that was kept running because Apple offerings seemed so out of touch; then some others got interested to "complete" their iOS devices and even traditional PC users got sucked in for novelty factor or battery life argument.
In practice if the second-hand market is to be looked at, many went back to other machines and the market is inundated by underpowered, overpriced, close to entry level machines (people figure out the hard way that 8GB of RAM is very tight for a post 2020 computer no matter how good your software optimisation is...). Now the second release of AS was disappointing to say the least (pretty bad considering the price hikes) and I think many are holding to see what they can do with M3. So the sales have dropped a lot, at least as much as all other OEM if not more (especially in comparison to previous years). So I think what they call the market share is actually the sales number, that doesn't mean much. If you account for all the hardware that got retired plus all the hardware that sit unused (waiting to be sold or else) macOS market share has been slightly slopping upward at best. Mostly stable in practice. When you look at the sales numbers, it is almost 80% laptops. They barely sell any of what you would call a "PC".
It makes sense; since laptops is the only place where AS has any advantages and it is also the only way to use your extra expensive "computer" as a status symbol. This is also what most employers are going to buy for their staff because unless you need real power where AS is almost disqualified from the get go it makes everything easier. They used to sell a lot of iMacs (especially the 27" version) because it was very convenient, but they don't have those anymore so... If anything, macOS is becoming less relevant as a computing platform by the day and more of a luxury alternative brand. So its market is becoming less relevant by the day too.
I think Apple is on the path to become to computing what Campagnolo is to cycling... Traditional PCs are not going anywhere and for way more reasons than just upgradability (your car is not technically upgradeable but is made with components from many different competing suppliers). |