I think Apple is a very American thing. Outside the US, which you may not care about, only the most aspirationally Americanised people I've known have gone for apple products. Im not sure what the reasons are.
Europeans generally don't purchase the things they want, they purchase the things they are supposed to be wanting, after having long deliberations together with relatives and friends. So then they'll only look at specs and price and not how useful a product is or how pleasant it is to use.
Europeans are in general very weird about money. They are as greedy as anybody, but what do they do then with that money? They think turning on the air conditioner will ruin them financially and they count how many cents each person owes each other.
In 2007, when the article was written, I distinctly remember being at Amazon and Windows laptops were the default option. So was the entire office suite, their share point thing, not to speak about Outlook. In fact one had to beg to IT guys to allow us to use Linux laptops. MacBooks were still a few years away if I remember correctly.
It's amazing that PG looked around in his bubble, saw MacBooks and decided to write that Microsoft is dead.
Europeans are in general very weird about money. They are as greedy as anybody, but what do they do then with that money? They think turning on the air conditioner will ruin them financially and they count how many cents each person owes each other.