Steve Jobs on innovation at Apple
businessweek.com
businessweek.com
A: Look at Microsoft (MSFT ) -- who's running Microsoft?
Q: Steve Ballmer.
A: Right, the sales guy. Case closed. And that's what happened at Apple, as well.
Ouch.
Steve says " Microsoft has no culture, they just make third grade products."
In the places where I've lived, Apple was/is not much of a player at all particularly since the 1990s.
I find it peculiar that there are so many Apple-related posts on YC News!
Also, more and more technical books have screenshots in them done using Mac. While I can't say Apple is "popular", I can certainly say that Mac is getting more popular.
Most of Web Designers have background in Graphics Design. Graphics Design use Mac.
Ruby on Rails developers (most of them) use Mac thanks to the hype and the shiny screencast made by DHH.
While the last reason might not be important, it also has some effect to certain degree to books; IE6/WinXP theme looks old (same thing with IE6/WinXP classic theme) while Safari looks much nicer in those web development books. Basically people need fresh air that's all. It's not that Mac is better.
Did you know that Yahoo! Mail doesn't work in Safari?
So, I'm guessing, yeah, they are pretty popular in SV too.