My compilers class is currently filled with at most 20 people. Of those, 4 of us are typing away on our Macs as the prof speaks. Pretty high ratio considering Macs are supposed to have a 3% market share or something like that.

i think it's closer to 5%, which would be 1 in 20. of course, your compilers class is highly representative of the general computer-buying public.

if anything, it shows that people that use computers more often, tend to choose macs. but, since it is a class of computer science students, you'd think they would be willing to spend more on computers, since they are building a livelihood around them. there are probably a number of other reasons that make the anomaly easy to explain.

Yeah. I thought it was strange how much higher the ratio is in the CS department now.

i don't think it's that strange, considering the only computer worth buying from apple is a laptop. they're excellently made and competitively priced. i bet the ratio of mac owners to pc owners is significantly higher amongst laptops than desktops.

I'm not so sure about the "people who tend to use computers often choose macs" bit, as the vast majority of the professional computing world would be a prime counter example. I think it's really just that Apple managed to get the right bits and pieces together and price it so that (apparently) students could afford the things. Hell, if they did that with desktops I'd probably own one now that they have a semi-useful OS too :P

Hey Ram...I thought you were talking Stat 231...what have you learned about the necessary sample size for a 0.9-confidence interval. ;-)

no, i don't think people who use computers often choose macs, either but i was trying to point out a connection that could be made given what ram had said. i also suggested value as a possible reason.

I think they should take the iMac, and just sell the base and the monitor separately. That might make the computer much cheaper. And if PC user's wanted the cool monitor they could buy one too.

Shame G5's are so damn expensive.

man, i've written like five emails to apple about selling just a cheap box without a monitor. some of those emails may have bordered on offensive, but that's debatable.

stupid shithead apple.

Is there any significant difference between an iMac and your standard beige box? I really haven't been keeping up with computer hardware stuff. I know the towers that Apple sells are usually souped up a fair bit and if someone gave me 5 grand and said I had to buy an Mac, I'd get one of those.

The iMacs are pretty nice computers. They have good specs and stuff, but are still priced pretty far out of my most peoples hands. Especially now, since maybe when they came out LCD's were like a 1000 bucks, but that isn't the case anymore.