No
wait, let me revise that: they might not be big or fat.
But certainly they're an idiot. I'm so tired of reading devastatingly
misleading articles about how Apple has "failed" to increase
Mac marketshare, I could puke. They're complete nonsense
from top to bottom. Because while increasing the total number
of Mac users is vital to the ongoing prosperity of the platform,
and it's one of Apple's stated goals, "marketshare" has absolutely
nothing to do with it. People are Switching to the Mac in
spades. For proof, all you have to do is more or less stick
your head out the window and look around. Want evidence?
How about the fact that the Internet is just littered with
first-person Switch stories? You can figure that for every
Switcher who took the time to publish his or her story on
the web, there are a thousand Switchers who didn't. The great
influx into the Mac platform has begun.
Want more
evidence? Go hang out in an Apple Store and listen to the conversations
between the customers and salespeople, get a feel for how many
of them have never owned a Mac before (based on the kinds of
questions they're asking), and then watch how many of them
end up leaving with their first Mac. Switchers are coming from
Windows, from UNIX, from Linux, you name it. The influx is
coming from all sides. I happen to know first hand, because
so many of them seem to feel compelled to write in and tell
me about it.
But perhaps
because they know that doing so will infuriate us and in
turn drive up the hit count on their website, or perhaps because
they're simply in denial themselves, various reporters have
chosen to simply pretend that the phenomenon isn't
happening. And the easiest way to do so, of course, is to find
a statistic that has nothing at all to do with the size of
the user base, and then continue pointing to it as so-called
"evidence" even as more and more people around them go ahead
and make the Switch.
So nevermind that substituting marketshare numbers for user
base numbers makes no sense at all. If you claim enough times
that it does, then some readers not paying close enough attention
will be conned into falling for the notion that marketshare
has anything at all to do with the total number of users.
So why doesn't
it? That's easy. Macs stay relevant longer, allowing users
to continue using their Macs for far longer before having to
buy a new one. In the time that a Mac user buys one new computer,
a PC user has likely bought two. Does this mean that there
are suddenly two new PC users and only one new Mac user? No,
actually, it means that there are no "new" users at all. The
Mac user remained a Mac user, and the PC user remained a PC
user. But marketshare numbers show two PC's purchased and
only one Mac. If you didn't know any better (or if someone
were trying desperately to con you), you
might be tempted to look at the numbers and conclude that there
were somehow two PC users, when in fact it was just the same
guy buying two PC's.
So when you
look at the worldwide marketshare numbers among computer vendors,
you see that Apple holds around three percent of the market,
and that it's been holding steady (fluctuating slightly)
for the past few years. Wow, what
a story! Apple's marketshare is tiny, and the company has failed
to increase it! Let's put it on the front page! No, no, no,
no. Nice try, con artists. If we are instead to look at the
size of the Mac user base, a statistic which actually has any
relevancy to the situation, you get a whole different (and
accurate) story.
Those who
have actually taken the time to crunch the numbers have estimated
that somewhere between eight and twelve percent of all consumers
use Macs. And as I said, anyone not living in a bomb shelter
is aware of the sheer volume of Switchers that have made
their way to the platform in the past few years. For that matter,
the fact that marketshare has remained steady actually proves that
the user base is growing. So
reality is that the Mac user base is impressively large and
continues to grow. Any "journalist" who talks about Mac marketshare
instead of Mac user base, in an attempt to claim that almost
no one uses a Mac and the ranks are decreasing, doesn't deserve
to be called a journalist. Instead of reading their article,
write to their boss and demand that they be fired. Or better
yet, just skip their article entirely.
Anytime someone
writes one of those sensationalistic articles, they can't help
but give it an equally sensationalistic title -- which is your
cue to skip it entirely. Let's collectively put a stop to journalists
getting away with boosting their own notoriety by pretending
that the Mac use base is small and shrinking. They don't
have the right to misleadingly spread fear, uncertainty, and
doubt about our platform, simply in the name of bringing people
to their website. So if you see a link to such an article,
try to get 'em fired or just skip their article, but whatever
you do, don't click through to it. Just by clicking through,
they can claim to their boss that you came to the site and
read the article. Don't give 'em the satisfaction. In fact,
let their boss know that you don't intend to read anything on
their website until the misleading crap has been brought to
a close.
No
Panther user should be without:
