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Comment by DanBlake | Hacker News Reader

"In fact, so many people I work with don’t use Windows as their host OS."

Then the people you work with are a edge case minority.

Windows absolutely and completely dominates the desktop computer landscape in both enterprise and home. Most estimates have it at 90-95% penetration worldwide vs mac/nix.

For anyone who may say macs are now selling more than ever before and that MS is losing market share fast, remember that apple is not even in the top 5 for computer manufacturers. For every Mac computer sold, there is 90+ Windows equipped computers.

While MS may be in trouble in the phone/tablet market, they still are on extremely solid footing in the desktop market. The question just becomes, what will become a desktop computer in 5 years. Will we all abandon what it is currently and move to tablets?

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By this reasoning, programmers and software developers are an edge case minority. Yes, they are only a small chunk of the people who buy computers, but they have tremendous influence over the future direction of the field.

Which is to say, paying attention to the mass of office workers does not tell you something about the direction of the software world, it tells you about what dogfood is being forced onto the workers at this moment in time.

I largely agree with what you're saying, but at some point some of the workers eating the dogfood become the managers buying the dogfood. Sometimes (hell, maybe the majority of the time) their decisions are self-serving and uninformed; but sometimes their decisions really are based on making the organization as successful as possible under their current circumstances.

It's at this point that we look at what the majority of dogfood buyers are buying and realize that the influence of software developers is probably less than the influence of the people buying the software (sorry for restating the obvious there).

Anyway, the point, if I have one, is that the mass of office workers probably does tell you something about the direction of the software world -- and in fact, if we consider the net worth of IBM, Oracle, SAP, CSK, MSFT, Intuit, Autdesk, etc.; we might find we are at odds about where the 'tremendous' influence is coming from, if there is any such thing as 'tremendous' influence at all.

This being HN, here's the obligatory disruption remark.

> "IBM, Oracle, SAP, CSK, MSFT, Intuit, Autdesk"

Ripe for disruption.

Go, HN, go - disrupt the dinosaurs.

I'd like to add ESRI to that list if I may.

If you have accurate stats for programmers/developers showing their desktop choice, by all means.

I would bet on Windows being well over 90% still. Remember Microsoft sells worldwide, not just to silicon valley. How many programmers in China do you think use Macs?

Could not agree more

What also people seem to ignore is the current surge of workstation users switching from mac pros to cheaper and more powerful workstations with windows

Not quite. For every Mac sold ~16 Windows computers are sold. 2004 was Apple's worst year VS Windows and even then the ratio was 55:1. It is not now, nor has it ever been close to 90:1. The numbers are easy to find, and there's no excuse for pulling numbers out of thin air as you did above.

If you include tablets with computer sales (a line MS seems eager to blur) then Apple is the #1 computer manufacturer in the world at 14.6% of market share. HP is #2 with 14.1% of combined computer and tablet market share.

Sorry, but this is completely inaccurate. Normally I would let it sit here as this post is over and nobody will see it, but those figures are not worldwide data. In some areas Mac certainly has higher penetration but it is absolutely not the case in worldwide sales. Again, for every 1 mac sold, there are 95 computers loaded with windows sold worldwide.

Latest peer-reviewed stats I could find:

In August 2011, Gartner estimated Apple's PC market share in US as 10.7% for Q2 2011. Apple's worldwide market share is not listed, because it is not in the list of top 5 computer manufacturers, and is inferred to be 5% or lower.

That suggests a lower than 1:90 ratio for worldwide, at 1:95

Im sure that there are many mac-fanboy stat posts showing more penetration but the fact is, they simply are -not- shipping anything near the levels you are talking about. Apple is a public company and you can simply see their numbers vs just one or two US shippers (HP/Dell) - Never mind the overseas producers.

Of course this is purely anecdotal, but I've seen a few Windows-only places become mixed Windows and Mac. Yes, it may only be 10% Mac today but that's from 0% two years ago. And the macs are seen as desirable, so I wouldn't be surprised if it increases, especially as the IT department processes for integrating them have been worked out.

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