Some Opinion...

Our opinion is that the great Apple advantage over the years has been marketplace (not necessarily technology) innovation aided by great design.  The mouse and desktop came from Xerox (Search for 'Xerox Star'), Drawing and photograph manipulation software came largely from other companies  (e.g. Adobe Photoshop circa 1990), the iPod (introduced in 2001) was not the first portable all-digital music player, but it was the first with a great design and iTunes behind it.

Apple did establish early strength in visual arts (e.g. graphics, photos, film) which persists today in some of these categories (notably film), but we also believe that the gap between Mac and PC software is ever narrowing, and often tipped to the PC side in terms of market size, software availability, etc.  (e.g. updates to 'Office' or 'QuickBooks' for example).  During most of it's existence, and certainly in the last 10+ years, Apple's share of the market for computers has declined steadily, but it's been aided by a growing total market for computers, it's effective offerings for niches (e.g. artistic purposes)  and by its innovative new mainstream products (e.g. iTunes, iPod, IPhone, iMac, etc.).
 
In very real terms Apple has adeptly exploited it's smaller market share over-and-over to position itself as the marketer of the 'next-hot-thing' which has helped it continue to exist despite challenges.  And that may continue indefinitely, but we don't see Apple ever being able to develop a user base comparable to the PC.  More likely in our opinion is that Apple, Dell, Microsoft and all the others will be pushed aside by the next big computing thing!  Maybe it's already in our midst, pushing, and named Google...

And, Some Facts...

There's some interesting research/opinion on the 'Apple Mac' vs. 'PC' question on the web. Here are a few relevant links you may wish to correct, cut and paste...

Cost Comparison (2004)

www-oreillynet-com/mac/blog/2004/05/mac_vs_pc_a_small_cost_compari.html

Everything Comparison (covering 1975 to 2006)

www-jmusheneaux-com

Processor Comparison (2003)  

www-pcmag-com/article2/0,1895,1274182,00.asp

Features

www-guidenet-net/resources/win_vs_mac.html

Guide to Co-Existence 

macs-about-com/gi/dynamic/offsite.htmmacs-about-com/gi/dynamic/offsite.htm?zi=1/XJ&sdn=macs&cdn=compute&tm=6&gps=105_369_1276_869&f=00&su=p284.2.420.ip_&tt=2&bt=0&bts=0&zu=http%3A//www.apple.com/uk/smallbusiness/mac_pc/

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