Gruber is a prime example of this. Exactly as you describe, when Macs didn't have market share it was all about how market share didn't matter. And, to be hon

Gruber is a prime example of this. Exactly as you describe, when Macs didn't have market share it was all about how market share didn't matter. And, to be honest, he made a pretty compelling argument. But every time Apple jumped up a rank in US or global sales there was a gleefulness and gloating aspect to the posts that would report it. When rumours of the iPhone was leaked there was enormous sledging of Apple. People literally made mocking posts about how ridiculous a one button phone would be. Apple and their one button phone were the laughing stock of tech punditry. For months people wrote about what idiots Apple and their fanboys were. Then Apple demoed the iPhone, and everybody suddenly realised that the "drooling idiot fanboys" were right after all. So yes, guys like Gruber are being hypocritical with their banner waving "we're number one" stuff. but they took so much crap for so long, that to resist that urge to thumb your nose and do the "nyah nyah I told you so" thing would require super-human self-control. ---- In market share there is almost never a complete victory. Even Microsoft almost but not quite had a complete victory in the OS wars. They could have killed off Apple, but didn't. Now, 10-15 years later, if you looked at profitability or the market cap you'd be forgiven for thinking that Apple had won that war. But if you look at market share you'd still think that Apple had one foot in the grave. The problem is that all these one dimensional views are (surprise!) myopic. We love to make straight-up comparisons of Apple and Microsoft - but Apple is predominantly a hardware/entertainment company and Microsoft is predominantly a software/business company. It's like trying to compare an insurance company with a supermarket (which is possible, but it requires hard work and patient analysis, neither of which pundits are generally blessed with an abundance of). Would we compare Microsoft and Dell, and say that Microsoft had "beaten" Dell? No? Why not? After all, there are people who hold the view that Microsoft encouraged and pushed the commoditisation of PC hardware, which meant that the hardware manufacturer's profitability kept getting chipped [sic] away at. Fanboy gladiatorial aspirations aside, you could probably make a better argument about Microsoft being at war with its hardware partners (atn: Nokia -> Microsoft is not your friend) like HP and Dell than it being at war with Apple.