Before Diedrich's was bought out and replaced by Starbucks I used to go to the coffee shop all the time. Every Diedrichs had free WiFi that was surprisingly fast. However, I am not yet willing to pay for the T-Mobile hotspots that Starbucks employs... its sad. I yearn for Diedrichs.

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Sitting in a cafe in London with a mac laptop (like my beloved iBook) is a surefire way to get mugged just after you leave, although you could substitute "coffee house" for "lecture hall" at my university and the same would be true.

At the start of term, I was the only one doing my note-taking on a laptop at all, let alone a mac, and by the end of the year there were around 6 or 7 dotted around our 40-strong class. Steve owes me royalties.

-Reid.

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Here is SF, I would hazard a guess that most coffee houses are 7 out of 10 Macs. Kind of scary, but hey, since I am one of them, it's all good.

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At the local Tully's with free wi-fi I actually notice more Windows machines, but I do live in Redmond, which probably factors into that.

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A guy walked into a Starbucks I was hanging out at and sat next to me with some 15-inch Toshiba notebook (running Vista) he had just bought. He had some obscure video cam that he couldn't get to work or import videos from, even though the manufacturer's support site said their drivers were Vista ready.

He asked me to plug the cam into my MacBook Pro - and I was able to download vids perfectly with no extra installation voodoo. After finding out he only spend $100/200 less than I did on my machine, he said he was taking his back for a Mac.

So now, I guess you could say that the Mac attendance at that Sbux has improved at least a little. :)

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I hang out with my 24" iMac in coffee shops and Panera Bread all the time. I'm the big white elephant in the corner....

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OMG!!!!! WHO CARES?????

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Coffee Society in south bay seems to attract many Mac users. It could also be that these coffee shops are near colleges and are frequented mostly by students.

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Derek, why bother posting?

At coffee shops here in North Portland
(Oregon), I'd say the ratio is 3 Macs to 1 PC. Interestingly enough,
I'd also say it's at least 5 women for each man (with a laptop).

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It's hard to lift the typical PC from its kiosk at Target (wedding kiosk) or from Jiffy Lube and of course, telemarketers are wired to the PC with a 2' only leash ... so 80% of PC's can't go anywhere or if they did, they call it company stolen property ...

The 15% who can roam with a PC laptop have pretty much spent 99% of their credit limit on their $599 laptop so they cannot afford anything other than the free coffee samples at Trader Joe's - no chairs there. Or at Cost Plus, other free coffee sample place - no wifi but all the wicker you can sit in though if you weigh more than 225, careful, you squash it, you buy it.

That leaves 5% who work for MS and of course, other than the Mac BU have to eat and have Ballmer smear their own dog food. That's Dell sexy!

Mac users never have to punch in - they can come and go as they please and in fact, might be launching an IPO because the biscotti is a little stale.

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@fred: that's nothin' dude, I use my Mac Pro with a 30" cinema display in the subway. ... Yeah, I guess this makes me cooler than you :-)

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I'm glad to see this blog entry because I've noticed the same thing. I spend a lot of time in my local Caribou Coffee in Charlotte and I've noticed a strong Mac presence - at least 50%.

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This is so funny. I had never gone to a coffee house until just today for lunch and noticed how many Mac laptops people had there. I noticed it so much that I counted, there were 7 mac's to 2 Windows laptops.

My theory on this is Mac people are more "creative people" and the majority of people that hang out at a coffee house are artsy people hence the more Mac laptops.

Don't start yelling at me because I referred to Mac users as creative people this is meant as a high complement. I am not a Mac user but will be come August 3rd. Missouri's Tax Holiday so I don't have to pay sale tax. Woo Hoo.

Anyway I had to comment on this since I just experienced it today.

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As a freelancer, I spend a lot of time in coffeeshops. The amount of Macs I see is much higher than their market share.

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You know if my Ruby skills were better I would have put up a "coffee quotient" site. I had been thinking that it would be interesting to capture the ratio of Macs to PCs at coffee shops.

Who wants to help setup the Coffee Quotient. The dynamic barometer of Mac popularity?

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I would say in the many starbucks I have been to 33 - 50% (sometimes more) of the computers are macs - considering the C Mac laptop market share percentages this means the overall Mac percentage is higer than that of Windows

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The coolish independent coffeehouses in Denver are about 60-70 percent Mac users. I've been counting.

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I think that this is one of those awareness cases where one is more aware of things you are familiar with. But I definitely see more Macs at the local bookstore. Maybe it is because most Mac users tend to be the artsy type who enjoy the bohemian lifestyle. Windows users, the accountants and engineers, prefer to crunch their numbers in the privacy of their cubicles :)

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R U guys kidding? I'm waiting for my birthday to get a Macbook so that I can hang out at my local Sbucks... Leopard and a few other goodies will be on it by then too can't wait.

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Here in Seattle, when I was unemployed, and thus often in coffee shops I noticed it to be 50%+ macs, which surprise me. That was about a year and a half ago, and if anything it look to have grown (but my visits are less common.)

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