Okay, it's no secret I'm an Apple user. I use them for work, for home, even for blogging. But for the longest time it "felt" like I was alone. And by longest time I mean for the last 20 years of my life. I was a lonely Mac user occasionally bumping into another. No wonder I got excited about seeing one on TV and in the movies.
Well that rare feeling is starting to wane. I'm speaking in at the Streaming Media conference in San Jose this week and EVERYWHERE I look I see Macs. Mostly pretty new MacBooks (white seems to be in vogue) and it feels like they are 50% of the laptops I've seen. And when I speak to people who are using PC laptops, they almost always offer the fact that they are "thinking" about moving to a Mac.
I know Apple had a pretty good quarter on the strength of great Mac sales, but my informal poll is indicating a huge resurgence here - I'm going to start predicting 20-25% marketshare soon. With Apple's market-cap now at $162B - (more than IBM and Intel) it is now half as valuable as Microsoft - and it has less than 10% of the market for PCs.
So let's recap. Apple in the late 90s was close to dying. Then Steve came back and the Mac (and great marketing) was reborn. the iMac begat the iPod, then the iPod begat the iPhone. And now the Mac is back again, primarily because a whole new iGeneration is willing to look at the Mac for the very first time. And they like what they see, they get one, and they tell their friends. And the cycle is just starting to spin up. Enjoy the ride!
