As Mac users, we've long outgrown the obsolete metric of market share as a measurement of platform health and corporate viability, right? After all, quarterly market share numbers include the zillions of PCs sold for use as cash registers and machines sold into other markets in which Apple doesn't compete, so those percentages are always artificially small. Moreover, there's the old comparison to car manufacturers like Mercedes and BMW; they have Apple-sized market share and do all right. Apple's the only computer company other than Dell consistently making a profit on its PC business-- a business with far smaller market share than IBM's, we might add, in light of IBM dumping its PC business as a lost cause. So again, as Mac users, we're totally at peace with Apple's 2ish percent market share.

Sure we are. And Steve Ballmer is a paragon of personal hygiene-- not to mention a model of grace and poise as the latest dancer in the Bolshoi Ballet.

The fact is, no matter how many rationalizations we may come up with or how valid they may in fact be, a little part of us dies every time we see that Apple's market share is still below 3 percent. Sure, Apple may be making money and the Mac may be the best it's ever been, but the fact that Wintels outsell Macs 50 to 1 is a fundamentally abominable state that heralds, at best, the imminent collapse of Western civilization-- and at worst, the coming of a thousand-year Reign of Darkness that will end only with humanity's death at its own blade of ignorance and corruption. (Or something.) That's why we were so glad to see that, according to the Associated Press, IDC says that "worldwide shipments of personal computers grew 13.7 percent in the fourth quarter" compared to the same quarter a year earlier-- not because it signals some tech-based growth in an economy that hasn't given anyone much to cheer about, but because it indicates that Apple's market share is on the rise.

See, you may recall that when Apple announced its best quarterly results ever last week, it noted that it had shipped just over a million Macs in the December quarter, which was its highest reported unit tally in four years and a 26 percent increase from the same quarter in 2003. See where we're going with this, Math Boy? Macs are up 26 percent in the same period that PC shipments overall were only up 13.7 percent-- which means Mac sales growth is outpacing that of the industry, which means that Mac market share must be on the rise.

Before you do a naked dance of thanks to the gods of Tech Justice, though, it's probably worth noting that since the Mac's market share was already so comparatively tiny, any increase is going to look practically negligible. We're far too lazy and easily depressed to look up what IDC or Gartner said Apple's share was in Q4/2003, but our back-of-the-envelope calculations based on Apple's reported Mac shipments and IDC's numbers for quarterly unit sales say it was about 1.83 percent, whereas Apple's share last quarter was roughly 2.03 percent. Two tenths of a percentage point is hardly enough of a change to get naked and greasy over.

Or is it? Because with the Mac mini onboard to draw more Wintel switchers and the iPod shuffle widening the scope of the "halo effect," maybe this is just the start of something very, very big. Why, if Apple fires on all cylinders and everything falls perfectly into place, it's not entirely inconceivable that by this time next year, Apple's share will have even doubled.

To, um, four percent.

You know what? We're just going to sit over here in this dark corner and mope for a while...