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Comment by dejb | Hacker News Reader

The same argument says Windows is the best desktop/laptop software. "The customers have spoken."

Yes, when Android first launched it was very interesting to see Apple users use phrases like 100,000 apps in the app store and dominant market share, and how these have changed as they were overtaken.

Mac users were always defending the boutique, specialist, quality over quantity arguments on the desktop and then suddenly it was all a numbers game for a while there.

There is a legitimate "existing library of apps / network effects" argument here, as well as an illegitimate "appeal to popularity" one.

At a certain point the numbers no longer matter in an app store. My phone is a guitar tuner, one of five available. If my devices store had twice the apps, I don't think I'd benefit much.

"Mac users were always defending the boutique, specialist, quality over quantity arguments on the desktop and then suddenly it was all a numbers game for a while there.".

The truth is, that the kind of people who say things like that are the kind of people who look for opportunities to argue about that kind of stuff and your statement reads like you have a clear bias. That's not a very objective perspective to my mind.

-sent from my iPad

If it makes you feel any better I use neither platform, I am an Ubuntu user

-sent from my Amiga

I'm not sure if your post was meant to be humorous or unintended irony.

Completely intentional.

I don't think so. If I was to claim that more people will buy Macs than PCs, then you could say "the customers have spoken" and that I was wrong. But I never claimed that.

Ballmer here is claiming that nobody wants the iPad form factor. That's just patently false and you only need to point to sales numbers to show that.

All I'm doing is to point out the implications of your reliance on current sales as a measure for future success and/or 'goodness of product' (whatever that means). If you try to mix and match your metrics (or tenses) without explanation then you are being roughly as (in)consistent ad Ballmer himself.

Apple's got over 90% of retail market share for computers > $1000. The customers have spoken, and said they'll take windows on cheap machines.

The same logic begs the question "so why are they losing ground?"

Momentum takes a while to reverse.

Uh who is windows losing ground to exactly? My understanding is that mac osx has been losing market share since Windows 7 came out.

I believe the same but I have no data, could you point to some source?

It would appear that it is correct or partially correct. I couldn't find data for the whole time, but as of the end of last year, OS X market share appears to have flattened and then gone both up and down from that point by a fairly small amount.

Here is an article talking about market share http://annasoft.wordpress.com/2010/10/04/report-ios-driving-...

and here is one which doesn't mention mobile: http://www.statowl.com/operating_system_market_share_trend.p...

Which is why the derivative (or rate of change in OS market share) is more informative than current position (OS market share).

And that remains correct. The difference is that Windows customers are the OEMs.

No, the biggest reason was pre-installation and nasty tactics by Microsoft out of the starting gate.

It was as quality-price ratio without a doubt. You wanted a cheap PC you could change different cards, you got PCs(and windows with it).

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