<i>It took a closed platform - a perfectly cultured, strictly defined environment that was the iPod to start building the halo (and with that, peoples' trust) towards the desktop/laptop Mac.</i><p>There are many plausible interpretations of history. Mine is that Mac market share took off around the same time as the ascendancy of laptops, when screens and mobile CPUs got to the point where they were no longer hugely inferior to desktops. Mac laptop sales exploded because they're both more aesthetically appealing (which matters more for laptops since other people see them) and more functional (e.g. sleep and wireless actually work reliably).<p>I also think early alpha geek adoption of OS X helped to a lesser extent, both in terms of the software they created and in recommendations to friends and family. The iPhone/iPad may become like Windows in the 90s: what developers write for during the day to pay the bills, while they do their hacking on platforms that don't frustrate their desires.