I don't think Apple was ever really strong with the "idiots" market until the iPhone halo effect came into being, as much as they may have tried in their marketing.

That market always bought the cheapest machine (or "best value", by specs/$) they could find (or, if they were really an "idiot", the machine that Best Buy had the highest commission on), which would be a PC.

In the beige days, Apple's bread was buttered in the publishing market, once they moved to OS X, they got the "professional nerds who wanted UNIX but not doing sysadmin at home".