I read recently that Apple computer now makes up over 90 percent of the computers sold that cost over $1,000 dollars.

This was interesting, considering that the average Windows PC price was just over $650 for desktops, and just over $700 for laptops.

So, what does this little statistic tell us?

Well, first of all, it tells us that a specific segment of the consumer PC market is choosing a computing platform based on something other than price. In the segment of the market where low price is not the dominant consumer value, Apple has seized consumer mind-share. Whether they truly do provide the best value or user experience for that market segment--and many argue that they do--isn't really the point. The real point is that Apple has overwhelmingly convinced consumers that its products and services provide the most value in terms of complete user experience.

On one level I don't think this is surprising. The overall "Mac culture" has long pronounced that quality, usability and design trump price. But on another level it's interesting because I think we as consumers are discovering more and more that it's no longer enough for our computer systems to just simply "work." In the early days--1980s and early 1990s--the fact that personal computers existed at all was somewhat of a novelty; having one in your home was in many ways more about "having" the computer than "using" the computer. But we're now on the 9th or 10th generation of microprocessor since the original IBM PC debuted back in 1981. We're on the 7th version of Windows since 1985; there's been more than five updates to Mac OS X since 2002 alone.

The point is, as computer users, we're seeing that we have choices now, choices that we didn't have before, and more importantly, choices that we didn't even know we needed to make in terms of our computer usage. We now recognize when a user interface is good or bad. We recognize when something is easier or harder to do than it was before.We recognize that computing platforms are hardly static--if we want a different experience with a computer than the one we're having, there are ways to do it.

So what's the real point of this blog post? It's not to persuade anyone one way or another on which computer system works best for them. Everyone has reasons for using their chosen computer system (whether they consciously acknowledge it or not).

I think the point is that Apple's market share highlights that the expectations of how we use a personal computer are evolving. Pure functionality is no longer enough; it not only has to work, but it has to work in conjunction with our other lifestyle choices.

So much of what we see as "basic computer use" is taken for granted--user interfaces, program interfaces, the way messages and information are presented to us--that there is an evolving movement to evaluate just what exactly our optimal computer experience is. And not just what it is now, but what it can and should be down the road. We're evolving as computer users to the point that we begin to recognize that there are certain patterns and processes of how we work that some computer systems simply do better than others. And the most valuable thing we can do to improve is to begin to recognize those patterns and processes, and base our future purchasing decisions on optimizing those experiences.

So, what does the sales statistic for high-end computer purchasers mean? Nothing, other than a specific consumer segment believes one type of computing experience is superior to another. The real question is, have we figured it out for ourselves, and would we know it if we had?