Most people don't care about computers. Most people spend maybe a couple hours a day in front of a computer and so they will buy the cheapest option they have available. That option will be Windows every time, because they cut corners and end up with shoddy products like this.
For the small minority of the population that spends a large amount of time in front of computers and makes their income from computers (programmers, digital artists) they almost all use Macs.
>>> For the small minority of the population that spends a large amount of time in front of computers and makes their income from computers (programmers, digital artists) they almost all use Macs.
While more of them do use Macs, it's certainly not true that "almost all" use Macs. They are still a minority.
In my, arguably limited, experience, it's web developers that tend to use Macs. I don't see any other type of devs with Macbooks. And web developers are also the group that is most visible on-line and tends to hold disproportionate amount of conferences.
"People who give talks at conferences" have almost zero intersection with "people who program for a living" and "laptop I use to give presentations" isn't the same as "computer I use to do everyday work." It's like trying to figure out what the most popular commuting car is by watching NASCAR racing.
I'm taking issue with "almost always," that's absurd. If you look at actual surveys [1] Windows wins by a large margin.
But hey, stock photos, soooooo.... Yeah!
LAMP wouldn't be a well know acronym and .NET wouldn't be a robust and widely used dev environment if everyone was using Macs. I've been programming professionally for two decades and I've (happily) either used Linux or Windows for the entire time, never touched a Mac in my life. Of course, I am in enterprise software, because it pays the bills, not because it's cool. I'm much too old to try to be cool.
(People giving talks at conferences are trying to impress an audience. Same with stock images. Flashy laptops, of course, are impressive and noticeable and give the image of "professional.")
When you get a chance, check out the page you linked to. It definitely backs up my anecdotal observation with solid numbers. Looks like about 26% of developers (or at least Stack Overflow users) use macOS.
Given a rough estimate of ~18mil software developers in the world[1] this gives use a rough estimate of nearly ~5mil developers using Macs.
So that's why I found it interesting to hear a developer say, "I don't know any programmers that use Macs." There are... a lot of them.
But, as you said, you've sequestered yourself in a fairly narrow niche throughout your career so it's not surprising. I'm sure there are web developers out there who literally don't know anybody that uses Windows because they've stuck to their own niches as well. Although, I work in enterprise software and my whole team is on Macs, so it's not even like you need to look outside your niche.
LAMP wouldn't be a well know acronym and .NET wouldn't be
a robust and widely used dev environment if everyone was
using Macs.
LAMP is a bit of a nightmare on Windows. Been ages since I did it, but the PHP ecosystem made a lot of non-Windows assumptions and things like Imagemagick and file upload handling in general were always kind of a pain. For this reason Macs are popular with the LAMP crowd as well. If I was doing LAMP on Windows I'd use a Linux VM or perhaps the Ubuntu compatability layer that's been added to Win10.
"People who give talks at conferences" have almost zero
intersection with "people who program for a living" and
"laptop I use to give presentations"
Not the conferences I follow. All working engineers giving talks. Not TED-style vague pop-sci motivational stuff. Though I'm sure there are conferences like that. Get out of your niche, hit up a conference, meet other developers maybe? Or just check out some presentations online in your field of interest via ConFreaks etc?
People giving talks at conferences are trying to impress
an audience. Same with stock images. Flashy laptops, of
course, are impressive and noticeable and give the image
of "professional."
I wonder where you are! In Boston, and at mathy CS conferences, 15" MacBooks are routine. Someone always has a Surface, and 10-50% are thinkpads or XPS with Linux.
People who give talks at conferences aren't the same thing as your everyday professional programmer and the computer you use to give presentations isn't necessarily the same as the computer you use to do everyday programming.
Are you working at a hip VC funded startup? I am in enterprise software. Sure, we don't get the press coverage, but we quietly get the multi-million dollar customers and I go home to my family at the end of the day.
For the small minority of the population that spends a large amount of time in front of computers and makes their income from computers (programmers, digital artists) they almost all use Macs.