radiant.matrix

So from 18 to 66 percent in two years — in what had seemed until very recently a relatively old and stable market. In short: people who care about computers, at least insofar as “caring” means “spending over $1000”, are switching to Macs. Interesting. — John Gruber, Daring Fireball: Sixty-Six

Yes, that is interesting. However, there’s a lot of buried complexity that just doesn’t come out in the statement above, or the article from which it comes.

First, the “PC market” in general is very hard to define, especially for people who really care about their machines. Purely anecdotal, of course, but most people I know who care deeply about computing build their own machine from parts¹ — those numbers are not counted in the PC market-share analysis.

Second, while Apple’s growth in a market segment ($1000+ PCs) is impressive, it’s not very useful information when it comes to observing trends in the overall market. In that regard, I think Mr. Gruber is on the nose when he says:

a simplistic “overall PC market share” number has never been a good metric for gauging the Mac’s success because the “overall PC market” includes millions of commodity-level low-end machines that Apple neither tries nor wants to sell. — John Gruber, Daring Fireball: Sixty-Six

I’d take it a step further, though — I think that the metric is poor because Apple isn’t really a PC company. Apple’s computer products, from design to the way they’re marketed, is so wildly different than the rest of the industry that I’m not sure Apple really even belongs in the set. What you buy from Apple is less computer and more experience.

1. Those that don’t, though, do seem to buy Macs.