I was specifically responding to the Developer angle of Mac buying. If you want to talk mainstream it was clearly the iMac then the iPod then the iPhone then the iPad that captured society.
I would argue they aren't that separated. If the Mac hadn't got popular with the consumer market it could be said that Linux distro's could of been the popular choice for that market, as it's free and the Apple laptop ecosystem could of languished. The success on the consumer side fuels the viability of the laptop from the dev side as well.
If it never got popular on the consumer end and I couldn't manage my office docs and such on it, while I may use it at home, many workplaces and therefore the mainstream dev may of never adopted the Mac. What I use at "home", is what I want to use when I come into the workplace. There needs to be a critical mass before most workplaces (where many dev's work) to adopt it and therefore develop an ecosystem around it (e.g. your favourite IDE's, tool chains, etc)
