Survey Results: What Mac Users Like, Don’t Like.

Numbers tell the story, right? Often. Sometimes. Not always. Recent surveys and polls of Mac users give some surprising results.

We like the iPod, we pay for Internet music (mostly), we have plenty of music on our Macs, and we plan to buy this computer…

Over the past few months we’ve run a number of reader surveys and polls on a variety of topics of interest for Mac users. iPod, iTunes, Mac OS X, Favorite Word Processor, Favorite Mac and why, most popular iLife application, most popular browser.

It’s a healthy list. If there’s one thing we found it’s that Mac users don’t mind sounding off. We’ll let the results speak for themselves.

The most recent survey was What Will Be Your Next Apple Computer? That wasn’t a trick question. Apple admits to selling just about as many laptops (iBooks, PowerBooks) as desktops.

43% of readers responded and said the iMac G5 would be their next Mac. Laptops made up only 26%.”If the survey results mean anything, Apple will have a huge hit on its hands in the new iMac G5.

43% of readers responded and said the iMac G5 would be their next Mac. Laptops made up only 26%.

For the complete survey and results, Click Here.

Music is a hot topic for Mac users. We pioneered legal downloads and the troika of iPod, iTunes, and iTunes Music Store remain the market leader in every category. We wanted to know Mac user habits for iTunes Music Store purchases and how that compares with illegal downloads.

What’s surprising is the number of songs on users iPods, and the number of songs that are legal (or, mostly legal). How Many Songs On Your iPod? Legal? Not Legal? The results?

Remarkably, iPod users load up those iPods, iPod mini’s limited storage not withstanding. Nearly half the iPod users have over 2,000 songs, nearly 30% have between 1,000 and 1,999 songs.

That’s a remarkable percentage. With the iPod mini holding only about 1,000 songs, Apple obviously miscalculated a bit.

Now, are those songs legal or illegal? We expected a little of both, of course. We’re not that far removed from the Free Music from Naptser days.

67% of readers responded and said their music is Legal or Mostly Legal. That compares favorably to 19% who said the music on their iPods was Mostly Illegal or All Songs Illegal. 7 respondees didn’t want to say.

For the complete survey results, Click Here.

Apple provides some of the most attractive software available for any computer in the form of the iLife suite. iTunes, iMovie, iPhoto, iDVD, and GarageBand.

Which one do Mac users like the most? What’s second? You can almost guess, but Mac users are a surprising bunch. Which iLife Program Do You Use The Most?

It’s iTunes, hands down at 75% of nearly 1,200 responses. Next was iPhoto at 16%, then iMovie, GarageBand (new at the time) and iDVD. Based on the popularity of the iPod, and the fact that iTunes is free, that shouldn’t be a surprise.

“Fully 80% of Mac users these days prefer Safari to other browsers. Firefox came in second at 10%.”What is a surprise is the result of the question Which Mac Browser Do You Use Most? Since Apple started shipping Safari with Mac OS X, it’s become something of a darling among Mac users. What’s surprising is how quickly Mac users ditched Microsoft’s Internet Explorer.

Fully 80% of Mac users these days prefer Safari to other browsers. You’d expect Internet Explorer to be next in line. It wasn’t. The popular Firefox (also runs on Windows) came in at the runner up position with about 10%. Camino was #3 and all the others trailed after that.

Internet Explorer? 13 out of almost 1,200 respondees gave it a lowly 1%. Server logs to our site indicate a similar popularity with Safari, although about 25% of our readers are using Internet Explorer on Windows (we assume they’re Mac users at work and they’re forced to use Windows).

This was a more comprehensive survey with more results. The view the details,
Click Here.

Surprised? We found a few surprises, particularly the number of Mac users ready to buy an iMac G5 vs. a laptop. The other surprise was how quickly Mac users ditched Internet Explorer in favor of the simplified (but fast) Safari.

Check out the daily list of our 9 Word mini-Reviews at NoodleMac, and Kate's daily in-depth Mac software reviews at PixoBebo.