I have no doubt Toronto has a thriving Mac market. Unfortunately for Apple, Toronto isn't Canada.
I know many people (in business and the Federal Government) out in "Prarie Region" who are responsible for areas from Western Ontario to the Yukon, and the head office is in Saskatoon (or Winnipeg, or Regina, or Calgary). Visiting each client once will take you a month, you can forget about putting in an 8 hour day, and that's just a dozen or so clients in different cities. Ontario people are used to doing that in a week or less.
I mention that, because if you contact Apple Canada, they give you a long list of resellers here. For Saskatoon, I think I got somewhere between 8 and a dozen each time I checked.
You will be lucky to find 2 with actual product somewhere in the building, let alone on display. Outside of Saskatoon and Regina (30% of the population lives in an urban community outside these two cities) forget it. You can buy a new PC, however, in the first town you see; if you live outside an urban community, that's going to be about a half-hour drive or less.
I would hazard a guess that Apple doesn't even know their resellers won't even put an iMac on a shelf; I would be suprised if they've ever seen an Apple rep at the door. At least I hope that's the case; I would be even more upset if they knew the so-called Authorized Resellers here don't promote the product in the least.
London Drugs has helped enourmously; before that your only choice was to go to the Campus Computer Store to drool; they can't sell to the public (and finding a parking spot within 6 blocks of campus can take an hour) so actually getting a computer home won't happen from there.
When I bought my G4, two stores offered to order one for me, sight unseen. By that I mean I didn't even see a decent sized box with an Apple logo on it anywhere on the premises. Since their level of support was obviously zero, I went ahead and ordered one with a quick eMail to Edmonton. It arrived in 2 days, PST free. And this from someone who always gives a local retailer the first crack at my money.
If you ever travel to the US, most small towns and markets have Apple resellers within a reasonable distance. I had no trouble finding Macs in Little Rock, Arkansas; in North Dakota, in Wisconsin. Each of the communities I checked were smaller than Saskatoon. Am I the only guy who can't figure out why there are thriving Authorized Harley-Davidson resellers in SK towns of 10K but no Apple resellers?
My guess is, outside of Toronto, it gets quite a bit harder to find a Mac to even look at, let alone buy. Ontario may be more like the US, but don't expect that anywhere else except in the biggest 10 cities in Canada.
In fact, you can't even buy a Mac magazine in communities that service 70% of this province.
As for the stats, no they're not out of "thin air". I will try to find some links for the curious (I didn't bother to bookmark them). I can assure you they didn' come from some blogger's wishful thinking, though.
