[Carbonize @ Oct 10th 2007 9:48AM]

Thats kind of a stupid thing to say. People who prefer macs have no choice but to buy Apple or am I wrong and Apple now lets other companies manufacture Macs ?

As for the iPhone being up there it's only just been released so of course a lot of people are aware of it. Even more so given the hype that Apple and certain "blogs" gave it.

Maybe they should do the same survey in Europe and see the difference. That and 1,200 is hardly a decent sized sample.

[lassi @ Oct 10th 2007 11:04AM]

point being maybe also that if the iphone is a seperate option, people are going to choose it.


a better way to survey would have been to ask if you want a cellphone, and then ask if you want a nokia,samsung,motorola or apple.. not if you want a cellphone or an iphone.

[Dave @ Oct 10th 2007 1:05PM]

N=1200 gives you a margin of error of less than 3%. It's called statistics, AND IT WORKS. Look it up.

[Carbonize @ Oct 10th 2007 1:09PM]

Questioning 1,200 people (assuming they were questioned and not just given a list of things to choose from) will hardly give you an accurate picture of what a population of billions is thinking now will it. Might of well just gone down the nearest bar and asked the people in there.

- Anyway 98.8% of statistics are made up.

[Dave @ Oct 10th 2007 1:54PM]

No, seriously, look it up. Google "sample size". Even if you don't understand the math, it still works.

[Carbonize @ Oct 10th 2007 2:29PM]

Yes stand outside an Apple shop and ask everybody who comes out what they would like. Yup that would be an accurate picture of the countries opinions. As others have stated polls like this don't mean jack.

[brian @ Oct 10th 2007 3:04PM]

I hate people that have no idea of statistics come out an immediately claim a poll is inaccurate because they don't agree with it. Statistics is fairly well proven, and if done correctly will result in fairly accurate results.

[Evan @ Oct 10th 2007 3:01PM]

Wording of the question can have a much larger impact than sample size. This question is poor, because Apple products are given their own category while other products are not. As said above, they should ask people if they want a cell phone, and then ask people the brand.

Besides, a margin of error of less than 3% just means that, if you were to ask every human living in the U.S. that question, their answers would be within 3% of the poll's result. It doesn't mean people are actually going to go out of buy those items.

[rob @ Oct 10th 2007 5:07PM]

there's not enough information in the article about the survey conducted to conclude either way if the survey produces robust results. thus, debate on the topic of the quality of the survey results is pointless.

having said that, i think the survey does point to some strong evidence that AT LEAST 411.6 people [1200 x 35% x (1-2%)] have no clue about why they're getting an HDTV besides. (The number assumes that the HD set top box question was specifically asked to the HDTV respondents, which from the text is a questionable assumption.)

[rob @ Oct 10th 2007 5:09PM]

sorry for the sentence fragment. i meant:

"...have no clue about why they're getting an HDTV besides the feeling that they have to get one because it's big and everyone else is getting one."