Eighty per cent of iPod users won't touch a Mac

APPLE FANZINES have cracked open the champers after a survey of iPod users showed that some of them would switch to the Mac.

Mac News World proclaims the survey shows that the messianic leadership of Steve Jobs was correct and that if punters bought gizmos to play proprietary music which fall to bits after a year, then they would eventually splash out on the Mac. This is called the halo effect.

"Evidence is mounting that a potentially tectonic shift in Apple's place in the PC market could be coming in the next few years," the mag gushes.

However looking at the survey, Charles Wolf of Needham and Co says that 7.6 per cent of iPod users say they'd switch computers even if the Mac can't run Windows. If the Mac ran Windows more than 20 percent said would switch.

If this figure was projected onto global sales, says Mac News World, then Macs would command a staggering five percent of the market by 2011, Arabs and Jews would get along together and there would be no more war.

While you have to applaud the extreme optimism of Mac News World you can look at the figures another way. More than 93 per cent of iPod users prefer Windows and 80 per cent of them would not even look at a Mac, even if it ran Voleware.

The survey only asked Windows users if they would consider buying a Mac. It ignored the possibility that many people who are extremely sceptical about Windows might go to Linux before they splashed out on a Mac.

Another crucial figure that the Mac News World boys ignored was that, of 2,400 people surveyed, 300 didn't own a computer but only a 100 owned a Mac.

That such a slim selection of iPod users already owns a Mac seems to indicate that the halo effect, so far, is a bit of myth. µ

L'Inq
macnewsworld