XPost: comp.sys.mac.advocacy   
   From: ldo@nz.invalid   
      
   On Wed, 14 Jan 2026 17:11:07 -0500, -hh wrote:   
      
   > On 1/13/26 17:29, Lawrence D’Oliveiro wrote:   
   >>   
   >> Given how minuscule Adobe’s market share is, I would say that is an   
   >> even less useful proxy for overall market share.   
   >   
   > Adobe had over 40M paid subscribers in 2025.  That alone is already   
   > 55%-70% of the estimates for the total Linux PC user base ...   
      
   I was going to say, that’s not a very large number. Half of those   
   would be Mac users. So basically Adobe is an irrelevance to about 99%   
   of the Windows installed base. And 100% of the Linux installed base.   
      
   Like I said, it’s not a very useful proxy for overall market share of   
   any of those platforms.   
      
   Unlike Steam, which seems to be much more platform-agnostic. They’re   
   not picky like Adobe: they’ll take anybody’s money.   
      
   > ... plus there's also Adobe's free reader products that many   
   > additional PC users will have installed. Its therefore reasonable to   
   > conclude that there's more Adobe users (paid+free) than there are   
   > total Linux PC users.   
      
   Is that saying much? Are you saying that the desktop Linux installed   
   base is actually large enough to be taken seriously?   
      
   >>> With reportedly ~100M active Mac users ...   
   >>   
   >> That’s pretty unlikely. That could only happen if Mac users are   
   >> keeping their machines in use for, say, an average of a decade.   
   >   
   > Nowhere close to a decade, because Apple reports quarterly sales in   
   > the 6-7M range, which is ~25M/yr, so 100M units took just four (4)   
   > years of sales.   
      
   Interesting, because another Mac fan has been trying to claim,   
   elsewhere in this group, that Mac users do indeed keep their machines   
   for quite a long while -- he specifically said 5-7 years.   
      
   > Similarly, even if one adjusts sales down to 5M/quarter for 20M/yr to   
   > claim that it requires five years of sales, that's been achieved too,   
   > because Apple hasn't had a quarter where they reported less than 5M in   
   > sales since June 2018...and seven years at 5M/Q = 140M units.   
      
   Apple stopped publicly reporting unit sales many years ago. So you’re not   
   going to find evidence to back up any such figures.   
      
   > MacOS marketshare on Steam, sure, but there's data sources other than   
   > Steam ...   
      
   Certainly not Adobe, as you tried to suggest. Or Apple, even. So where   
   else are you getting your supposed figures from?   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)