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Comment by djhworld | Hacker News Reader

Apple don't really have much of an interest programmers, other than those who are developing for their platforms (OSX/iOS).

I doubt programmers make up a huge % of Mac sales either to be honest, with the success of the iPhone breaking Apple into the mainstream, I don't think it's that difficult to find casual users making the switch to a Mac

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"I doubt programmers make up a huge % of Mac sales either to be honest"

You sure? It'd be interesting to see the results of an HN poll on this.

The install base of Mac is 50 million. http://www.boygeniusreport.com/2010/10/20/apple-cfo-tim-cook... There are about 9 million programmers in the world (heard this from Joel at BoS 2 weeks ago -- not sure if it's true, or if I am remembering correctly). If 50% of devs have a mac (way overestimate), we make up less than 10% of the users. Now ... how many of us need Java?

At my employer, I would guess that 60-70% of the developers use Macs, all doing Java. I've seen similar numbers at other places I've worked.

Java shops use Java -- that's definitely true. But, are there enough of them for Apple to care? Apple doesn't make their own Python, PHP or Perl, and I bet a lot of Python, PHP and Perl devs use macs. I do for Python.

Well...Java maybe not so much.

But we all know the only reason to buy a Mac is that we look great when using it to write our Rails apps! :P

Apple sells 22M Macs a year, and growing. How many people do you think compiled a Java program on Mac OS X worldwide this year? 10K? M-a-a-y-b-e 100K?

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