Though our numbers are growing, Mac users are sort of the tech equivalent to The Marines. Few and proud.
Okay, I’m not exactly sure where that intro was going, but suffice it to say that it’s always a treat to see fellow diehard Mac users out and about. And now that the nerd quotient here has spiked to uncomfortable levels, maybe it’s time to just dive into the story at hand.
A recent survy from Chitika mapped the percentage of Mac users across the 50 United States. Looking at the chart above, it’s abundantly clear that Vermont loves it some Mac, with19.55% of folks there using some variant of OS X. Occupying second place is Hawaii (somewhat surprising, right?) with a 15.99% Mac share and coming in third is Maine with a 15.99% share.
Leading the charge in terms of Mac marketshare by City is, not surprisingly, tech-laden San Francisco with 24.0% penetration. Following close behind is New York City with 23.3% Mac marketshare and Los Angeles with a 20.1% share.
As you can tell, 6 of the top 10 Mac oriented cities are all in California. Overall, approximately 1 in 7 folks in California use a Mac which comes out to about 5 million people.
Now as for the states with paltry numbers when it comes to people who “think different”, it’s a tie between Wyoming and West Virginia who both have respective Mac marketshares of 4.19%. Also lagging behind is Mississippi with a 4.6% share and Arkansas with a 4.82% share.
You can check out an interactive map of the image above over at Chitka’s website here.
Note that the data used to compile these results were obtained during the June 2 – June 8 window.
June 28th, 2011 at 4:03 pm
The states with the lowest Mac penetration are also among the poorest states (well, I’m not sure about Wyoming). That makes sense.
Here in Hawaii, one factor may be that we have three Apple stores in close proximity, all in Honolulu. These generate a lot of interest.
June 29th, 2011 at 12:30 pm
There are all sorts of correlations here. Judging only from the map and city table, the places with the highest percentages of Mac users tend to be (1) the most educated and technologically sophisticated, (2) the youngest, (3) the most liberal and (4) the highest proportion of the creative class. (1) probably because the more technologically literate tend to be aware of considerations beyond price in their computing purchases that make Macintoshes more affordable; (2) because Mac allegiance grows stronger among the young today, thanks in large part of their early adoption of innovation stars iPods, iPhones & iPads; (3) because way back when, businesses demanded PCs as a sign of conformity among their employees & those who went Mac were seen as anti-business reds; and (4) because Macs have always been better tools for creation. Thus I see that low-income, low-education, conservative Texas is among the states with lowest Mac penetration; but hip, highly educated, creative and liberal Austin is one of the cities with greatest penetration. And by the way, San Francisco, Oakland and San Jose are basically all one urban area, as are Los Angeles and Long Beach a single area; so what the list shows is actually that three of the top seven cities are in California.
June 29th, 2011 at 2:57 pm
Does this include corporate / business computers ? I would love to see the distribution of home-computers only in the US and Europe.