The Starbucks near my home in upstate NY (which I visit almost every afternoon for a daily jolt of caffeine as well as a break from my home office) conducts a highly un-scientific poll of its customers every day by putting out two tip jars labeled with a choice between two things. When the staff adds up the contents of the tip jars at the end of the day, they declare a winner. The various topics of this survey run the gamut of possible subjects, but today the question was PC or Mac?
As luck would have it, this afternoon I walked in just after the jars had been counted and emptied for the day. I asked for the winner and was told that Macs won, with twice as much tipping as PCs - though the PC jar did get a fair amount of money as well. Despite being a big Apple fan, I have to admit this surprised me. This Starbucks is in a business neighborhood dominated by government offices and financial institutions, not the sort of professions where you typically expect to find a lot of Mac users.
I'm not sure that any real conclusions can be drawn from this. Maybe that there's a horde of Mac-loving New York state employees that nobody knows about? Maybe the local Apple Store and the halo effect surrounding the iPod and iPhone are having a real impact? Or maybe just that Mac users are more generous tippers?
Ironically, the question did seem to stir up a fair amount of discussion as to whether Macs really are that much easier to use compared to Windows. I only observed a small amount of this discussion, but the consensus for the day seemed to be that Macs are easier to use, but not necessarily as easy to use as Apple would like people to believe. There also seemed to be a consensus that switching to the Mac can be disorienting at first to longtime PC users.