I am assuming people were asked to participate in this survey, and that the survey mentioned that it was for the iPad (I couldn't see any place where it was mentioned that it the topic of the survey was anything more generalized such as "portable computing devices").
Because opinions on the iPad were quite polarized, especially among the techies who felt like the iPad was too inflexible, I tend to think the opportunity to participate in such a survey created a self-selection bias for the so-called "independent geeks" and for the Apple fanboys who want to ensure that the outcome of any satisfaction survey yields a positive opinion score for the device. Those are the two groups who dominate in the comments sections of any blog post or news article about Apple products, so is it even surprising that the two dominant profiles are "Selfish Elites" and "Independent Geeks"?
This certainly would be a good point if it were true. In reality people come to MyType to take a personality quiz. We just randomly inserted the iPad question into the personality quiz for 20,000 people. They're not particularly savvy on technology, just the average Facebook user.
We realized that as a personality typing application we have a very good platform for surveying any sort of opinion. Our user base is fairly reflective of the general US population, and none of them are coming to answer a survey about x. We plan to look at the personality traits that drive preferences in beer, politics, and much more. Subscribe to the blog if you haven't already :)
Fair enough. As I said, I "assumed" the details of how you invited participation in the survey, and you proved my assumption to be incorrect.
I did look at your pie chart for the question, and it still doesn't strike me as a properly constructed interval type of question (are "think it's a silly product" and "don't care that much" mutually exclusive? I could agree with both statements). "It's a silly product" is also not the kind of phrasing you would use to get objective results. The survey probably would have benefited from additional questions.
In any case, I'll stick to my original statement and say "take it with a grain of salt", as I would with the results of any poll.
Because opinions on the iPad were quite polarized, especially among the techies who felt like the iPad was too inflexible, I tend to think the opportunity to participate in such a survey created a self-selection bias for the so-called "independent geeks" and for the Apple fanboys who want to ensure that the outcome of any satisfaction survey yields a positive opinion score for the device. Those are the two groups who dominate in the comments sections of any blog post or news article about Apple products, so is it even surprising that the two dominant profiles are "Selfish Elites" and "Independent Geeks"?