Bonum Certa Men Certa

Apple is a Tiny Niche on the Desktop

Ballmer's slide on Macs and GNU/Linux
Steve Ballmer's presentation slide
from 2009 shows GNU/Linux as bigger than Apple on the desktop



Summary: On a global scale, Apple remains just a perceptual luxury of very few and those who know better give GNU/Linux a try

APPLE claims to ship only about 3% of the world's computers, according to a reader/contributor of ours. This figure makes a lot of sense because only US-centric market share figures can show Apple having gained significant foothold. The US population is about one twentieth of the world's population and Apple is of course US-based, just like Xbox 360 is US-based so any real comparison to Japanese consoles must be global to become meaningful at all. Ghabuntu has just posted this rant which it titled "Dear Apple Fanatics, the World is Bigger than America!"



Last time I checked, Nokia, even with the current crappy SymbianOS, still has over 40% of the TOTAL smartphone market share around the WORLD. And then too Android has managed to displace the iPhone as the third place platform. So what are these writers telling us? That there is nothing better than the iPhone or what? Or is it some form of addiction to anything that falls off the table of Jobs?

To be honest, it is very funny and sometimes irritating at the same time when you get bombarded over and over with such crappy articles that always tend to think the world is America and America is the world. Please Apple fanatics, we all know Lord Jobs is good at producing very shiny and likable UI, but please spare us the mostly baseless and frantic effort you devote to tearing apart anything that looks the least bit like a decent phone compared to your hypeDevices.


Nice to see the hype* meme we got started spreading further. Apple is just targetting people who are willing to pay massive premiums for commodity PCs with an Apple brand (which sometimes comes in the form of an illuminated logo that projects to some crowd in a presentation, for example, an implicit message like "I am richer than you"). Certain people would mumble something about "Mac experience" (whatever that is), but the dumbed-down menus are too restrictive and "I don't think those UIs are likable," wrote MinceR because "they couldn't even get maximize to work correctly.

“[At Apple] they couldn't even get maximize to work correctly.”
      -- MinceR
"[N]ice article though," he wrote in IRC. Apple is neither more ubiquitous nor better than GNU/Linux. It is more commonly found in the United States (not BRIC, which stands for Brazil, Russia, India and China) where Apple marketing is obscenely pervasive. For a modern desktop experience, give KDE4 a try. It does a lot more than Mac OS X can do and it deserves a lot more exposure. When it comes to small computers, GNU/Linux has become almost a de facto standard. Below is a new video of LimeOS (specialised GNU/Linux distribution).

[an error occurred while processing this directive]

Recent Techrights' Posts

Microsoft: Work Weekends Too
Microsoft literally working its workers to death
Stallman Has Explained Slop is "Marketing Hype Campaign" and Torvalds Agreed. The Difference is the Bribes.
So be like Stallman
 
Links 01/09/2026: Climate, Disinformation, Microsoft Overworking People
Links for the day
Richard Stallman's Site Still Offline (Third Day), But Richard Stallman is Active Online
he is busy online despite his site not being accessible so far this week
PIP Layoffs at Microsoft, Even in India
Microsoft is trying to hide the true scale of the layoffs
Layoff Trackers Are a Sham, They're Like US 'Unemployment Data'
Layoff trackers are similarly misleading as they only measure what companies openly admit and register with WARN notices
The Peculiar Case of OSNews, Which Experiments With Slopfarming
It wasn't published in error. It has been there for two months.
Russian Federation is Removing Windows From Computers
Windows is going "out of fashion"
XBox CEO Has No Clue What She is Selling
Some people believe Microsoft will parcel and offload the whole "gaming" unit to some other companies
analognowhere.com and xkcd.com Selling Physical Copies of Webcomics
That's one way to support their work
PIP/GVSA at Microsoft: Mass Layoffs Disguised as Something Else
Microsoft is trying to cheapen the workforce because the numbers don't add up
Microsoft Lunduke Uses Twitter ("X") Because It's Algorithmically Designed to Boost His Worldview/s, He Ignores What "X" Is
Maybe all those people really deserve one another
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Monday, August 31, 2026
IRC logs for Monday, August 31, 2026
Censorship by Threats
It should be noted that the Web site of Richard Stallman will soon enter its third day of downtime
In Romania, GNU/Linux Reaches 6%, According to Clownflare
Tomorrow we'll see the latest data from statCounter (for September)
Gemini Links 01/09/2026: Denali Park Train Trip, Crafts, and Community-Building in smol.pub
Links for the day
Microsoft Workers Doing 80 Hours a Week After Microsoft Culled Their Colleagues
there are days when they work 17 hours a day (barely any time left to sleep and eat) and work starts at 5AM
IBM Defrauds Shareholders With Fake News (Bribed Press) About "Quantum"
That says a lot about the state of "Tech Giants" and also the utterly shameless state of the media
Record Highs for GNU/Linux, Especially in the United States of America
the "market share" of GNU/Linux is about 9%, still about a third of what Vista 11 stands at
PIPocalypse at IBM
Silent layoffs
Spending Over a Million Bucks on Lawsuits Abroad When There's a Big Mortgage to Pay in America
Priorities, priorities...
Gemini Links 31/08/2026: Announcing ROOPHLOCH 2026, smol.pub Discussion, and LLM Plagiarism Engines Target Geminispace
Links for the day
Richard Stallman's GNU Turns 43 in 4 Weeks, FSF Growing
In a few weeks GNU turns 43
IBM's Cuts Are Worsening Security in GNU/Linux
IBM is still run by the same idiot who proposed taking over Red Hat
Links 31/08/2026: Anthropic Sued Again for Copyright Infringement of Massive Scale, 'Tokenmaxxing' Shows Slop is a Worthless Liability
Links for the day
Links 31/08/2026: "Teslas Are Still Driving Into Oncoming Freight Trains" and "LLM Moats Quickly Evaporating"
Links for the day
Debian Project Discards About 25% of the Votes on LLM Slop, Microsoft Votes in the General Resolution (GR)
"[t]he rules of the vote saw community members asked to rank each of the eight proposals. Just under 600 people voted, but Debian’s election team rejected many for unspecified reasons, leaving almost 450 valid votes to count."
Essentiality of Rest and Killing Oneself for Vicious Companies
Working for Microsoft is foolish
In the UK, Bing (Microsoft) Down to Lowest Level Since January
our tax money being passed to Microsoft via MoUs (back door deals with kickbacks)
SLAPP Censorship - Part 167 Out of 200: The Court of Appeal Might be the Next Step
Today is our last vacation day
German Government Sponsors IBM Because of GNU/Linux
Flatpak is sponsored by, run, and controlled by IBM
Richard Stallman Speaks to Christine Hall of FOSS Force, stallman.org is Down for Over a Day
interview does a good job addressing the hype about LLMs too
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Sunday, August 30, 2026
IRC logs for Sunday, August 30, 2026
Gemini Links 31/08/2026: Holidays, Stream of Consciousness, and Posting Online
Links for the day
Anniversaries Next Month
The month should be otherwise quiet and uneventful for us
Coding is Not Obsolete
we drown ourselves in chaff to meet "LOC" objectives while ignoring everything else
Microsoft Layoffs Perpetual But Silent, People Pushed Out Using Pressure or Incentive Schemes
Earlier this month we named some of the programs
Links 30/08/2026: Apple Rant and LLM (Slop) Scrapers Target Gemini Protocol and Gopher
Links for the day
Salaries Are Counted in Money, Not in Participation in the Employer's Scheme
articles greatly exaggerating GAFAM salaries
Walls in Free Software
mind your own business and move on
Even Linux Cannot Cope With Slop
Bots on the Web are truly obnoxious
What a Summer!
Tomorrow is the last day of this month
Links 30/08/2026: Soldiers in Niger Attack Presidential Palace and Airport, Nepali City Struggles to Handle the Many Dead Bodies
Links for the day
Clownflare Sees GNU/Linux Rising to 11% This Past Week
Is it the year of "Linux in China"?
Links 30/08/2026: Russian Strike on a Ukrainian Warehouse and Rhetoric Escalations
Links for the day
Gemini Links 30/08/2026: Photography, Paper Books, Linux Kernel and the Debian Projects Permitting Slop Plagiarism
Links for the day
Imagine a World Where Nobody Fights for Software (and Computing) Freedom
The community keeps fighting back, so some of these ambitions are delayed or watered down
FSF Has Grown (More Staff) After a Year of Financial Growth
On October 4 the FSF turns 41
GNU/Linux Has Become More Mainstream in the United Kingdom
It's a long weekend here and we guess some people dabble in GNU/Linux migrations, at least at home
SLAPP Censorship - Part 166 Out of 200: Garrett Wasn't Found Innocent Per Se, the Court Wanted More Evidence of Who Was Behind Particular Accounts Using Tor
It's complicated
Criminals Don't Obey Laws, California Does Not Enhance Online Safety
It has been a while since we last mentioned so-called 'age-verification' laws
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Saturday, August 29, 2026
IRC logs for Saturday, August 29, 2026