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"Most of those 9,000 new Mac users per day are in the United States, where Microsoft seems to be suffering a net loss of their installed base"

Apple had a share of 2.5% in the US in December, and is actually predicted to lose share in Feb and March, due to sharp increases in sales of Windows PC's running Vista:

"In a note to investors, Piper Jaffray & Co analyst Gene Munster said that the pent-up demand for Vista will put more Windows-equipped PCs in customers' hands in the January-March quarter of 2007. That, in turn, means Apple's share of the market will slip slightly, from 2.5 percent in December 2006 to 2.3 percent in March 2007. "

http://www.pcadvisor.co.uk/news/index.cfm?newsid=8456

"The writer, Tom Yager, is the Chief Technologist at Infoworld"

He has no basis upon which to make that assertion apart from yet another boast from Steve Jobs, that is neither backed by IDC or Dataquest, the two recognized authorities on measuring market share for desktop and server computers.
Tom Yager makes absolutely no claim to have conducted any thorough, detailed research of PC sales by gathering actual sales data like Dataquest and IDC do.

Munster was talking about market share. I'm talking about usage share. The percentage of installed base is a more important measurement than market share - unless you are a computer salesman.

The Net Applications statistics show that Windows is losing their aggregate percentage of installed base, while the percentages of Macs and Linux are growing. It's that simple.

Apple had a share of 2.5% in the US in December, and is actually predicted to lose share in Feb and March, due to sharp increases in sales of Windows PC's running Vista:

That statement is false. The 2.5% figure is worldwide sales, not US sales and that does not represent installed base.

Apple's 4th quarter 2006 market share in the US was 6.1% (Gartner) or 5.8% (IDG which includes servers). In the worldwide share topped 3% in January 2007. Webapplications.com shows that in February web usage on worldwide websites that are heavily PC weighted was 6.38%.

He has no basis upon which to make that assertion apart from yet another boast from Steve Jobs, that is neither backed by IDC or Dataquest, the two recognized authorities on measuring market share for desktop and server computers.

Steve Jobs "boast" is backed up by the sales figures reported to the FTC in their annual and quarterly reports which are a little more accurate than the guesstimates made by analysts. Apple's report for its 2006 Fiscal Year said "For the fiscal year, Apple sold 5.3 million Macs." Jobs cited the "over 19,000,000 OS X Macs" at the WWDC conference which took place in early August, after their 3rd quarter ended. The figure is accurate as of that quarter. It does not include the 4th quarter's 1,610,000 Macs nor the 1st Quarter 2007, 1,608,000 Macs as reported in their 10Q's. That would bring the total number of Macs to 22,218,000 OS X Macs at a minimum.

It is further stated, and backed up by industry surveys, that 1/2 of all new Macs are sold to either switchers or first time computer buyers. So, using the 1,608,000 Macs sold in the quarter ending December 31, that translates into 17,867 Macs sold every day (90 shopping days, Thanksgiving and Christmas don't count)... and 1/2 of that figure is pretty damn close to 9,000.

60.1% of the Macs sold that quarter were sold in the United States. That makes "Most of those 9,000 new Mac users per day are in the United States..." a true statement.