Survey Says: Mac and PC Shack Up Together At Home
8:39 am, October 6th, 2009, Nicole Martinelli
Let's not call the whole thing off, kay?
Color me unsurprised, but the Mac vs. PC mentality doesn’t always hold true at home.
The fascinatingly-named 2009 Household Penetration Study from NPD finds that Apple computers are in 12% of US households, up from 9% in 2008.
Ad campaigns aside, the study found that these Mac people don’t mind a little fraternizing with the “enemy:” 85% also have a Windows-based PC at home.
The study also found that Apple owners have more computers (and more laptops) than strictly PC owners, plus they also tend to have more gadget-happy households in general.
While 36% of total computer owning households have an iPod, 63% of Apple households do. About half of Apple owners have some type of navigation system, only about 30 percent of all computer households own one. (I’d link to the full survey, but it’s a 404 — they must be PC people and not have noticed yet).
My household bears these findings out: we’ve got three working Macs, an old corporate PC craptop, one (working) iPod, one no-name MP3 player and a DIY PVR. (Full disclosure: three out of four machines run on open source software — I’m the lone Office user.)
So, are you in an all-Apple household or is there a little PC in everyone?
Posted by Nicole Martinelli in News | Comment on this article
I have a PC around but thats because I am a convert. I am sure that is one of the main reasons why you are finding this. I will definitely not be buying any new PC’s. I plan to replace everything PC with a MAC.
Charlie, on October 6th, 2009 at 9:06 am
I threw all the Windows and Linux computers to the curb and replaced them with Macs. We gave fours Macs, 4 iPods, and Apple wireless access points. We also have three “I’m a Mac” t-shirts.
Khürt Williams, on October 6th, 2009 at 9:38 am
Our household has 3 Macs, 2 iPhones, 4 iPods and a ten year old Dell that hasn’t been used in years.
Shane, on October 6th, 2009 at 10:08 am
Our household is 1 PC, 1 Macbook, 1 Mac Mini, 1 iBook, 1 G3 iMac, 1 iPod Touch, 2 iPod Nanos, 1 iPod GCassic (80GB), 1 Blackberry Curve, 1Time Machine, 1 Airport Express for Airtunes, and two old PC’s sitting on a shelf.
The Apple stuff gets used daily, even the old iBook and G3 iMac.
Andre L, on October 6th, 2009 at 10:21 am
Quick, everybody yell out at once how many computers and other electronic devices they have. The Internet gives a shit about this exciting news.
Matt, on October 6th, 2009 at 10:50 am
My last “PC” died a power supply death back in 2001. Since then we’ve had one Windows laptop my wife thought she needed because she thought she needed Excel for Windows.
It wasn’t long before my wife was screaming in frustration because every time she logged in there were, in her words, “lots of different updates she had to install and reboot for. #$*&)*)#*$(* Windows!!!”
Come to find out, the old Apple laptop we had still had Office on it from the person I bought it from and it worked just fine.
I didn’t know it but she started secretly using the Mac Laptop for Excel. She stumbled upon it when she was using it for something else and found that it actually did everything she needed and the file format was compatible.
I, in her words, “caught her” using Excel on the Mac laptop a few weeks after she started using it. She was actually relieved because she she could give that ****** to her niece, who got it infected with a bunch of viruses within a week and a couple of months later after she kept putting it on her mattress on her bed it over heated and died.
I do have Office ‘08 but ONLY because I got it for $20 through work. My wife uses it. I don’t.
PS: My PC that died in 2001. I ran OS/2 and BeOS on it. It came with Windows but it wasn’t long before that had been wiped off and replaced.
OlsonBW, on October 6th, 2009 at 10:59 am
My PC has crashed 2 weeks ago for the second time this year (hardware issue). So, I promised to myself the next one would be a Mac. My first Mac is on my way
1 Mac Pro, 1 iPod, 1 iTouch and 1 PC.
Glauco, on October 6th, 2009 at 11:39 am
I personally have an iPod, an iPhone and a MacBook. I also have a DSLR, a HD camcorder and a TV tuner.
My parents have a desktop PC and a Compaq laptop, but my father has an iPhone and is considering purchasing a Mac.
Meghann, on October 6th, 2009 at 11:53 am
My mother uses a PC, I use a Mac.
Nathan, on October 6th, 2009 at 12:58 pm
I wish they (Apple) would hurry up and release the new iMac. Then i can take a sledge hammer to my old PC and display the results on you tube.
Fin Devious, on October 6th, 2009 at 1:30 pm
I blame my dad! 69 years old, he suddenly decides to dump Windows and buy a Mac! Likes it so much bought me and my wife one each, we dumped our Windows kit when we got the iMacs. Like Macs so much we each bought MacBooks. She has 6 iPods in various states of working and an iPhone! We only have one piddly little HP Windows 2133 netbook for watching vids wirelessly, finally an Ubuntu server in the spare room as a 6TB NAS server.
No doubt when young’uns get a little older they will want iMacs so they can dual boot for games, but at least they will grow up appreciating that home computer does not just mean Windows!
Fuzzypig, on October 6th, 2009 at 2:15 pm
My main desktop is a Mac Mini 2007 vintage but upgraded to 3GB RAM and 500GB 7200RPM drive and 2TB external Firewire drive for desktop publishing, web/email/remote console for work, and EyeTV , but I built a shuttle PC with Windows7 64bit for my wife (Come on Apple – make an affordable mini-tower again please like the old “Cube”), A Windows/Ubuntu laptop I have got from work, and a Linux server runnign VMWare – which then runs my mail server (SuseLinux Enterprise Server 11), My developement LAMP system, file server, DNS/DHCP server.
my iPhone replaced a buch of gadgets for phone/PDA/MP3 player.
2 Chipped Xboxes running XBMC by the TVs , and an XBox 360 – not networked as it won’t play nice with the other media players in the house
John, on October 6th, 2009 at 2:48 pm
I have an Altair 8800 and an IBM Punch Card 711. I telecommute with smoke signals and web conference with two cans and some string. My phonograph is spinning the latest Robert Johnson.
Dave, on October 6th, 2009 at 4:29 pm
I wonder how or if they counted [Bootcamp|Fusion|Parallels] – that’s the only MS Windows left in my house.
Mark, on October 6th, 2009 at 9:20 pm
My household has 4 iPods (2 newer classics, 1 older classic, and one REALLY old classic), 1 Macbook, 2 PC laptops (1 HP & 1 old school HP from the early 90’s), 3 PC Desktops (Dell, Gateway, and HP), 2 PS2’s, 1 PS3, a Nintendo Gamecube, a Nintendo 64, an original Nintendo, 2 Nintendo DS’s….wow this list could go on much more than i realized.
Bottom line is that my Macbook was a gift and now everybody else in the house wants one, but until then, the Dell Desktop is the go to cpu of choice – well for everyone but me!
@Dave – Hilarious. I bet your car runs on steam, huh?
Lydia, on October 7th, 2009 at 3:44 am
In our house we have 4 older PCs, a newish MacBook Pro, 2 iPhones, 2 iPod Touches, and 2 iPod Nanos.
ML, on October 7th, 2009 at 5:42 am
Our household has 1 mac, 2 iPhones, 4 iPods, 3 Working PCs. These 3 PCs won’t live long. Soon I’m going to replace it with Macs. By the way, I just started to own the first iPod/apple product stated above last year and I’m lovin it until I buy myself a mac.
haniph, on October 7th, 2009 at 7:30 am
We have have three Mac’s. On my iMac I also run a parallels XP vm. There are two DIY XP home machines, one of them a media server running SageTV, two XP pro machines, one of them a laptop and one Vista64 box (everybody hates that one). In addition to that we own two iPod’s and three iphones. Navigation systems: two. Add two NAS systems, running BSD and about 10 TB of disk space, mostly media.
Joerg, on October 7th, 2009 at 11:41 pm
NO PC’s ALLOWED in my house
ALL MAC ALL THE TIME
YEAH
Alexis, on October 9th, 2009 at 1:15 am