It is so funny to read these Apple vs. Windows discussions when you live outside of North America...
The truth is that, for the rest of the world, "Apple platform" means only iOS, only the IPhone, nothing more.
In Asia, Africa, Latin America and some parts of Europe, Macs and OSX are a rare species, most people spend years without even seeing a Mac computer "in the wild". They are used only for graphics editing and IPhone development.
These discussions only show how exotic HN is, a Silicon Valey bubble.
How do tech conferences and meetup groups work without a sea of macs?
But, it might be better to say HN is a tech bubble, because everywhere in the world that I've been people who work on web tech use macs, for most of us the job would be almost impossible without a *nix OS.
And this post was written (somewhat regretfully) from a Mac in Aotearoa/New Zealand, where non mac laptops are somewhat rare in the tech community (and are then usually Linux rather than Windows).
For "PC" (laptop and desktop), the market share of Apple worldwide is somewhere between 6% and 10%. Linux is ~ 1 to 2%. The rest is mainly Windows.
Interestingly I could not found Germany on http://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share/ but here is Switzerland which have one of the highest OS X penetration of the world (the highest?)
I don't have the figures for laptop only, but I don't believe for 1s that OS X is above Windows in any country (of a non-trivial size)
Maybe in certain extremely local areas, you see a highest concentration of mac laptops. Even then, I challenge you to count carefully and come back to us if you still find that mac laptops are more common than laptops running Windows. Of course there are some factors that can bias in favor of mac laptops, depending of where you look at. However, while that can be interesting from a socio-economical POV, keep in mind that Windows market share is, on average, consistently largely superior to OS X, regardless of if running on desktop or laptop computers.
I'm sure some of this has to do with wealth and the ability to pay for intangible, but definitely positive, experience premia. Go into a cafe in New York City or a college library and you'll see a sea of MacBooks. I might say 90% MacBooks (i'm a part-time grad student.) The situation is very different in the workplace, especially in lagging industries. In finance and management consulting, my past careers, I saw 99% PCs.
My casual observation: most commuters don't use a laptop in the train. Those who do, mostly Windows. Apples seem fairly rare, as in, every 20th unit or so.
UK Birmingham: 0700 trains to London (corporate types), Thinkpads, Dells and a few HP laptops all with Excel/Outlook in operation. A few hours later (students and younger people), it changes to tablets and Macs. Mostly watching films or doing Web stuff. And lots of phones.
I'd imagine a large percentage of Windows licenses in any country are for desktops sitting in offices (1000+ in my fairly small organsation alone).
Uhm no. Here in Norway Apple is huge. Go to a major Asian city and there are Macbooks everywhere. Sure there is higher percentage of Apple among some devs and for places with higher income, but to call a major product from one of the most valuable companies in the world "exotic" is absurd.
Again i suspect it depends on when and where one look around (never mind that every Mac has that "WITNESS ME!" spotlight on the lid).
There are certain industries etc that is very heavy Mac users, media production in particular. They crop up in the weirdest of ads because the production staff use them for example. But for the rest of the nation it is Windows all the way.
The only people i know personally that own a Mac musicians or in the ads/marketing/graphics business. And i think the latter, as much as the _nix internals, that has made Mac a web dev fixture.
Have you ever been outside of North America.
I see Mac's all over Europe all the time. Not only in developer friendly environments. Busses, trains, coffee shops,...
Basically this. Never mind that you could walk past piles of Lenovos, Samsungs, Acers, Asus', etc etc etc, and never notice. But Apple, thanks to that glowing fruit logo on the lid, basically screams "witness me!".
I think you need a reality check. Even here in South Africa, Apple's computer market share is steadily increasing. In general (and this applies to most countries outside the US), those who actually care about their computers (as opposed to seeing a computer as just a fancy typewriter) and have the budget to justify it, will often buy Macs. In terms of developers, I expect the market share to be even higher. In our company we have about 50 people and we're all on Macs (Airs and Pros).
The truth is that, for the rest of the world, "Apple platform" means only iOS, only the IPhone, nothing more.
In Asia, Africa, Latin America and some parts of Europe, Macs and OSX are a rare species, most people spend years without even seeing a Mac computer "in the wild". They are used only for graphics editing and IPhone development.
These discussions only show how exotic HN is, a Silicon Valey bubble.