The big battle out there in the land of super players of the computer world is always Apple vs Microsoft. It seems like people have to be on one side or the other. But more recently the battle lines have been reduced a bit by the huge popularity of the iPhone. For some people the iPhone is their first venture into Apple products. They have not used a mac before and have been solid users of Microsoft Windows on the home computers. But with the advent of the popularity of the iPhone more people are realising that a mac is maybe not such an alien thing as they thought and might be worth a try.
There are many fundamental differences between using an Apple Mac and a Microsoft based computer that for most of your everyday users, who have got used to using one and have found that hard enough, they are not going to learn a whole new set of commands and a different user interface. Most people in fact do not really need a Mac. In fact I would go as far as saying most people do not really need a full spec computer. How many people do you know that just use their computer or laptop just to check emails, surf the web and maybe create the odd document? It would be interesting to see the statistics on that kind of usage. Maybe that is limited to the older age group and that kind of use will drop out in time. If that is the case then there is an argument to be had that the use of Apple products will increase in time with the users wishing to maximise the available technology.
It would be a bit of a generalisation to say that the majority of Apple mac users are in some way connected to art and design – the Apple system has long been heralded as the best way to view and edit photos, graphic and other kinds of artwork, but as digital manipulation expands, maybe the use of Macs will too.
For Microsoft users there are plenty of programs that may match up to the capabilities of the Apple Mac (although that is disputed by the Mac users) plus with the ‘everyday surfers’ they still have a large proportion of the market, so they should still have a huge user base for years to come. However, the more that people use their iPhones as a computer (and if you can do your email and surf then that is a big bonus), then the use of standard PCs and Laptops may diminish in time anyway and at that point, who will lose the lion’s share of the market?
