As someone who was a massive fan of Apple MacBooks and recommended them to other people, I don’t do that now. I highly unrecommend them nowadays. I’ve personally in fact bought older second MacBooks since they last longer and work better than the new ones.
So it slowly adds up. Microsoft surface is already making a good dent in what was a loyal Mac Pro market.
As argued by Paul Graham:
"So what, the business world may say. Who cares if hackers like Apple again? How big is the hacker market, after all?
Quite small, but important out of proportion to its size. When it comes to computers, what hackers are doing now, everyone will be doing in ten years. Almost all technology, from Unix to bitmapped displays to the Web, became popular first within CS departments and research labs, and gradually spread to the rest of the world."
The number of people with HN-grade "techie" friends is a rounding error.
If that were the case, Apple wouldn't be selling tons of iPhone's in their "wall gardens" and DRM'd media content and the "Year of the Linux Desktop" would have come ages ago....
“There’s a App for That” <—- who makes the apps?
If that weren't the case Samsung wouldn't be the most profitable Android manufacturer with their crappy bespoked custom Android version.
If I was on android/PC they would have bought those, for tech support reasons.
I've influenced some friends, too. Word of mouth is the most powerful form of marketing, and professional users talk about their machines a lot.
(Devs, video editors, writers, designers, photographers, etc)
I may be wrong, but I'm highly skeptical that your parents had to be convinced to be a Macbook on the merits of it's technical prowess in relation to other competition. They probably just respect your opinion on technology regardless of what it is.