MacDailyNews - Where Mac news comes first

Dec 03, 07 - 12:17 pm Comment from: MacArch

The verbal equivalent of

• Pull pin

• Drop grenade

• See what happens.....

Dec 03, 07 - 12:17 pm Comment from: MCCFR

Oooooh, click-bait!

Speaking as a Brit, I'm going to get some popcorn and wait to see how this one turns out.

I am a fiscal conservative and a social it's none of my business. Maybe I am a libertarian and I don't know it yet?

I prefer macs because they save me money in the long run and the UI is intuitive.

There is another correlation to be considered. Those "blue" states also have higher levels of income and education than the "red" states.

It strikes me as ironic that conservative, Republican leaning states are called Reds.

It think that it has probably more to do with personal income than political preferences, though both are also related.

Yeah like there's such a difference between to the two party's.

Pick your poison America.

Hmm..

Mom: Democrat, mac
Dad: BIG democrat, PC
Brother1: Republican, PC
Brother2: Democrat, PC
Me: Independent, mac
Wife: Democrat, mac

Based on my small study, I see no correlation between Democrats and Mac use.

HOWEVER, I think you might find a correlation between mac users and wealth... and I think someone did this study once. If you look on that map, the richer states use macs more than the poorer states. It just so happens that poor states usually vote Republican.

In brief --> Mac user : wealth : Democrat

Whenever you see a Democrat using a Mac, you know right away that this is the only thing they actually do understand.

Actually it reflects percentage of population usage. States with large metro areas are going to have larger percentages of users than more rural states. It has nothing to do with politics, it has everything to do with where the most people live.

Maybe the Republican in me likes macs because they save me money and the Democrat in me like macs because they are beautiful and easy?

Why do we have to be one or the other?

Dec 03, 07 - 12:24 pm Comment from: Gregg Thurman

Injecting political affiliation into the discussion of who's using Macs is a worthless effort. With few exceptions Mac usage density parallels population density, and the location of Apple Stores.

MDN must be hard up for real news to resort to this kind of nonsensical fluff.

Dec 03, 07 - 12:24 pm Comment from: Randian

Gee, Librium. Try joining the Proofreading Party. You could use the initiation rites. (And DO keep being so very cynical about everything in life; it makes you appear to be so very much better than you really are.)

Dont' be an idiot. The state by state distribution of welfare, taxes, and alcoholism rates look very similar.

It's tough having a red govenor in a blue state, but we are much the better for it!

Dec 03, 07 - 12:27 pm Comment from: pr

Gregg,
Thanks for injecting some sense into this nonsense.

Smart people prefer macs.

All are welcome!!!!

red blue

its all green

Dec 03, 07 - 12:32 pm Comment from: toby

I think Mac users are younger...and Younger people tend to be more liberal than their older counterparts.


So in that way...I guess there could be a connection.

Dec 03, 07 - 12:35 pm Comment from: ron

I'm the small dot on the far bottom left. The truth is I'm far right. I'm soon to be 75. iPhones rule.

Pat Buchanan for Prez.

Dec 03, 07 - 12:35 pm Comment from: JadisOne

This will easily become a 200+ post thread by day's end.

Gregg Thurman,

Before you ignorantly criticize, click the link provided: Net Applications, not MacDailyNews, drew the correlation and posed the question, "Do Democrats prefer Apple Macs?"

@ Gregg: Right on!

Although it doesn't bother me that MDN brought this to our attention. I saw it yesterday and want to comment to Net Applications.

What concerns me is that Net Applications is willing to make this extremely wild speculation of some sort of correlation based on one guy's mindset. Net Applications should be ashamed of itself published such amateurish dribble. I guess they're only good at reporting numbers counted up by software, not at doing real analysis.

That's a lot of red!

http://www.joinrudy2008.com/

"Oooooh, click-bait!

Speaking as a Brit, I'm going to get some popcorn and wait to see how this one turns out."

This is going to be FUN! I am going to open a beer can too

That is the way it should be. Democrats are pro-education. Macs are also pro-education.
Most of the people who I know of that use macs are Democrat.
Also, the most politically active and powerful people on campus use macs.

Rudy2008,

You're right, that sure is a lot of red! Too bad your home state is the wrong color!

http://www.johnmccain.com/

Interesting that from the onset of color TV and through the Reagan days the Republicans were identified on these maps as blue. Somewhere during the Clinton days the main-stream media decided they wanted the Democrats to be blue. They now play if off as always being the way it is now.

Mac users tend to respect themselves more.

PC users will buy something that makes them waste endless effort until they give up on getting half the features to work, but then tell themselves that at least they saved $100 by not getting a mac. (Often ignoring the extra stuff they had to buy.)

Mac users take a broader view of the situation. We understand that their time is valuable, and a machine that just works means more time doing your job or raising your kids.

This broader view view of life is also correlated with wealth, and perhaps seeing through some of the political stunts that politicians pull.

Short view: We lowered taxes!
Broader view: Never mind that 6x the money you saved on taxes went into gas prices, as long as the government goes into debt everything is fine!)

Dec 03, 07 - 12:46 pm Comment from: Big Al

Isn't it strange that the younger you are the more you rely on parents and the state to take care of you. So you vote for the liberal agenda.

The older you get the less you enjoy paying everybody else's bills so you vote for the conservative agenda.

I wonder why that is? I think that if we taxed the young more, they would smarten up sooner.

Dec 03, 07 - 12:46 pm Comment from: MikeK

So it looks like Vermont and Hawaii have the highest Mac marketshare. I would have never guessed either..

As far as the political correlation, I'd say it's complete rubbish. It has much more to do with income level and education.

Dec 03, 07 - 12:49 pm Comment from: Ampar

Five pages?

I'll look forward to calling Towertone various slurs, including "racist", "fascist", "stupid American", etc. etc.. And it's not even my country!

Dec 03, 07 - 12:52 pm Comment from: GizmoDan

I am most of my family are Conservative Republicans.

We are also smart enough to all have Macs, one per person. (I'm not counting iPods, etc.)

Dec 03, 07 - 12:55 pm Comment from: Buster

Income plays a big role but level of intelligence plays a bigger role. But its not always a hard and fast rule and there are always exceptions. Look at George Bush, he has money and uses a Mac.

Of course they do!!! It makes them more efficient at taxing and spending us to death.

Well, duh. While there's merit to the argument that the figures reflect population density I don't think there's any doubt that Mac users as a whole have more liberal political values than PC users as a whole.

Knee-jerk insistence that there couldn't be a political component reminds me a lot of those tech columnists who still keep insisting that there are no real usability differences between the mac and pc.

Just because you want it to be true, doesn't mean it is.

BTW, Rush Limbaugh uses a Mac..

This doesn't jibe with the recent Gallup poll, that Republicans find themselves with better mental health than do Democrats:

http://www.gallup.com/poll/102943/Republicans-Report-Much-Better-Mental-Health-Than-Others.aspx

But that can't be if they are Windows users. Discuss.

@Big Al
"The older you get the less you enjoy paying everybody else's bills so you vote for the conservative agenda."

Your a fscking idiot Big Al. 12 Billion a month for Bush's war on a nation that had nothing to do with 9-11, lack of oversight on financial institutions so the U.S. economy and middle class retirements get flushed with sub-prime loans, and it is the the rich that get tax breaks and the middle class that gets stuck with the tax bill. The "failed conservative agenda" is what you mean.

Hey- someone had to end these courteous comments.

@ Smith,

"Maybe the Republican in me likes macs because they save me money and..."

Republicans and saving money has been a misnomer since Regan was in office. Do you realize that Bush has spent more of the taxpayers money than ALL presidents combined in history? Most of it going to the illegal occupation of Iraq. Did you know that Clinton actually had balanced the budget during his term?

Do Democrats prefer Apple Macs?

Although there are some correlations, there isn't enough to justify that hypnosis based upon the limited presented data.

For instance the people living in those highlighted areas tend to have more disposable income and/or more technologically oriented.

I saw Al Gores Movie, It the film, his powerbook was always visible or in his hand most of the time.

( I think it was a PowerBook since I didn't see the iSight Camera, and it was plugged into the old power cord )

I'm in Connecticut, and a student. My college has is 95% PC but the do have about 20 New iMacs.

And when I was in Florida,up to 9th grade, every computer was all Mac. My old highschool there only had like 10 PC's in the media center, and nobody used them cause they were always infected and slow.

As Beryllium said first above this is likely nothing to do with political affiliation. The Mac usage map and the political party preference map are the result of the same underlying cause, which is *education*.

Areas of smart, educated, sophisticated people both use Macs and vote Democrat. Areas of dumb-ass country folk who believe everything they hear on the "TeeVee," ... vote Republican and use Windows.

It's about IQ and sophistication only.

I don't understand what this has to do with politics.

If you instead did a gradient map based on Gross State Product (GSP) per capita, it would probably match up even better with the Mac share map.

Clearly people in more developed (economically, and almost surely technologically as well) states prefer Mac. Is this a big surprise?

Going forward, which group of states do you think is a better indicator of technology trends, California, New York, Massachusetts, and Washington (where Mac OS is relatively strong), or Alabama, Mississippi, and West Virginia (where Mac OS is relatively weak)?

I think that it correlates more with education and income.

Grandpa,

If I'm a "fscking idiot," but at least know how to properly use "you're," then you must be really bad off.

Dec 03, 07 - 01:22 pm Comment from: Macromancer

"The older you get the less you enjoy paying everybody else's bills so you vote for the conservative agenda."

It's not all about money dude.

Dec 03, 07 - 01:22 pm Comment from: Jim - TIV

@Ampar...
"Five pages?"

Nah... WAY too early in the political season for five pages. Three maybe.

Oh ToweTone! Oh TowerTone!
Oh where art thou and thy bigotted comments, TowerTone?

Dec 03, 07 - 01:25 pm Comment from: Anonymous©

They could quite easily do a regression analysis and make a real comparison. Just looking at two maps, where the Apple penetration map shows little differentiation does nothing to prove anything. Crap, Oregon barely went dem last time, and the same with New Hampshire, and yet they are two of the strongest Mac percentages.

The only obvious states that jump out are California and New York. Then again, Apple stores tend to congregate around urban population centers, as does the Democratic electoral strategy.

Dec 03, 07 - 01:25 pm Comment from: KingMel

An apparent correlation means little without detailed analysis. For instance, there is no direct data on computer ownership versus political affiliation.

There are many possible variables contributing to the apparent correlation. One that comes to mind is disposable income concentrated in the northeast and along the west coast. Besides, if the map were to change drastically in the next election, the political explanation for the Mac usage correlation would be invalidated.