Same in the United States. Outside of schools who got the machines for a substantial discount, they were bought for specific professional use cases like electr

Same in the United States. Outside of schools who got the machines for a substantial discount, they were bought for specific professional use cases like electronic publishing. Steve Jobs saw that it wasn't just the Mac but the entire PC industry that ignored the consumer market - Windows and the vast majority of software (excluding games) were built for the professional market, and the same beige boxes and components were rehashed for the consumer market with the idea that people would "want what they use at work". That was what restarted legitimate consumer market sales, and gave them a ton of ways to meaningfully differentiate their products (Microsoft didn't really start noticeably responding until the Zune and Vista)