[Ham-Mac] PERCENT MAC USERS AMONG HAMS

[Chris Smolinski]

James Johnson wrote:
>         There is a big difference between "installed user" percentage
> and "new computer sales".  Only about 5% of new computer purchases
> are Macintosh compatible computers according to the stats, but about
> 16% (according to the old stats) of computer users use Macintosh
> compatibles.  The percentage of Macintosh users may have gone up
> since then.  Most people do not understand the difference...We
> Macintosh operating system users get more life out of our computers
> because we do not have to buy a new computer every year or two like
> the Windows users do.  I just bought an Apple 7500 about a month ago
> that has an upgrade card in it that makes it the roughly, or not so
> roughly, the equal of an Apple 7600.  Before I bought that computer I
> was using an Apple Quadra 700 -- that is a 68040 based computer.

Quite true. I have a Quadra in the basement I use for some testing
purposes, alongside a PowerCenterPro that was upgraded from a 604e to a
G3.

> Developers should be pleasantly suprised by software sales if the
> software is good if they think that only 5% of computers use the
> Macintosh operating system.

The trick is what software can run on an older machine? A Quadra 700
would be perfectly fine for say a logging package. But not for running
MacDoppler, or MultiMode, etc.