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Comment by ender7 | Hacker News Reader

However, he is correct if you just examine laptop sales among college students:

http://daringfireball.net/misc/2011/07/u-texas.png

When I worked IT for my college, we saw a similar pattern amongst residential computer registrations - almost all of students' machines were laptops, and the majority of those were running OS X.

This might not have been such a big deal back in the day (once they graduated, they probably got a job that forced them to use a PC, and so they stuck with one), but the PC landscape is changing dramatically. Nowadays, it's a lot easier to mainline a Mac after graduating.

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Definitely true and I agree with all points. I would wonder how much of the overall laptop-buying population is made up of college students, though? Over time I could definitely see a significant effect (and as is stated elsewhere, Apple is growing much more in that market right now than others), but I would expect that to take upwards of a decade, as you can only 'convert' so many new college students each year.

Given the higher baseline cost of Macs, I would expect them to be more prevalent among college students because a) those people can afford to go to college and b) financial aid makes the difference between a $500 HP and a $1000 MacBook seem much less significant. I am still surprised by that infographic, though: 52% OSX wireless users! I probably would have guessed something more along the lines of 33%.

You're surprised because you haven't been on a college campus in the last five years. I'm amazed it's that low.

For most jobs, are there really any barriers left to using a Mac at home and PC at work? Considering computing for the vast majority of workers likely consists of email, excel, word, and powerpoint, I can't think of many. Certainly in-house apps would only work on Windows, but who uses those on their home computer?

Are we talking about work or home computers?

Overwhelming user pressure is slowly bringing Macs into the workplace, but they're only feasible because something like Citrix XenApp (aka Presentation Manager aka Metaframe) servers allow access to decades of in-house Windows applications.

But when those students arrive at Big Corp they're most likely to be issued a PC laptop. A more interesting stat would be the market share of purchases where the person paying is the person who'll use the machine.

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