Do DU Students Prefer Mac Laptops or PC Laptops?
Methods:
Our research was collected outside of Sturm Hall, on the Driscoll Green, and in the Anderson Academic Commons. We observed 75 people using their laptops over 40 minutes in these places and noted the system that they used, as well as asking 23 people to fill out a Google survey about their laptop preferences. We also interviewed Talie Hereford, a student using a laptop in the library, to get some more in-depth perspective about why people choose one laptop type over the other.
Results:
Survey Results:
Mac laptops are the most popular in use and preference, at ~65% usage and ~60% preference. Macs were most used by psychology, anthropology, international studies, and accounting majors, while PCs were used in relatively equal amounts among the surveyed majors. Among surveyed majors, the most common are psychology and anthropology, and most surveyed majors fell among the arts and humanities.
The most common use of Mac laptops was for schoolwork, with 12 responses, the second most common use being entertainment at 6 responses. The most commonly stated benefits of the Mac are its simplicity, its device compatibility, and the ability to use iMessage through it.
The most common use of PC laptops was for schoolwork as well, with 7 responses, the second most common also being entertainment at 3 responses. The most commonly stated benefit of the PC is touch-screen capability.
Observation Results:
Among the 75 observed laptop users, 44 people were using Mac laptops and 31 were using PC laptops. Mac laptops were more common among users in all locations.
Interview Results:
We interviewed Talie Hereford, a student laptop user, about the reasons why she used the laptop she used. She used a Mac laptop, and told us that she had always used a Mac. She said that her friends had also always used Macs, and her old school had used them exclusively as well. She also has an Apple phone. While she did not have a strong opinion either way, she said that she did not see a reason to change from her use of Mac laptops, but did not necessarily have any problem with PC laptops.
Discussion:
Through observing and studying DU students, we discovered that a majority of students on DU campus seem to use and prefer Mac laptops over PC laptops. However, there did not seem to be very strong opinions about this subject. Within our findings, many cited benefits of Mac laptops were also given about PC laptops, such as large screens and screenshot capabilities. There were even cases where the preferences question was not filled out, seemingly due to a lack of preference between the two kinds of laptop. Only one person for each kind of laptop gave survey answers that suggested a strong preference against the other kind of laptop. The laptops are also generally used for the same things, the one departure from this being the respondents reporting usage of only Macs for graphic design. Even in our interview, the use of the chosen laptop was mostly from habit, and not out of strong feelings for or against either laptop type.
In conclusion, DU students use Mac laptops more commonly than PC laptops, but the usage split is not backed by many strong feelings, instead mostly occurring through habit.
