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HTML has effectively been abandoned to four companies: Apple, Google, Opera, and Mozilla.

And Microsoft is where?

Their Internet Explorer is used by most Internet users today ( http://marketshare.hitslink.com/browser-market-share.aspx?qprid=0 )

1. Windows XP still has more market share (57%) than Windows Vista (12%) and Windows 7 (21%) combined. More to the point since Vista and XP are affected, more than three quarters of Windows systems are affected. They should care. We sure as hell care. If all Microsoft cares about is W7, that tells us a lot about their commitment to support and security. It's not 2002 any more. It's now 2011, and if being "all in" in the cloud and "all in" in mobile, and committed to "Dynamics" (whatever the heck that was) has distracted from their commitment to security, then we need to know because WE USE THEIR SOFTWARE for more than a year or two.

2. Windows is a brand. A label. A blank symbol. It's not, and never was an operating system. It has been an operating environment for some time, or as some would say, several. It doesn't, and can't, "give a flying fuck" about anything. Windows is a brand that's owned by a legal fiction, a "corporate person". Since there is some fictional personhood attached to the legal entity Microsoft, and some history, we may be able to ascribe some motivation to that with the understanding that anthropomorphizing soulless corporations is in itself a trap. Some here would probably say that Microsoft is the cruel bargainer the devil himself hopes to be someday, but at least we're agreed that it has some personification to hang motivations on. Please don't say "Windows" when you mean "Microsoft" it confuses many issues. They also make very good mice. Ok, they don't actually make the mice, but you should get my drift.

And yeah if it drives adoption of their new product off of their old product without too much escape to actually good product as a goal, we'd all have thunk it. Because that's what they do. The prevention of actual progress is their goal.

they are becoming increasingly irrelevant on the desktop as people are using mobile devices more and more for their needs

Operating System Market Share

Windows 91%
OSX 5%
iOS 1.36%
Linux 0.93%
Android 0.31%
Symbian 0.26%
BlackBerry 0.11%

For the global breakdown by country and region: Mobile vs. Desktop

"9 To 5"

"7 to 11" "Do you know where your children are?"

The geek might usefully ask himself how mobile the world at work or the world at home really is. The primary use of the smartphone, after all, remains the everyday, ordinary, telephone call.

Apple computer sales have been growing handsomely

All increases in sales look phenomenal when you start from a small enough base.

2. it is a good opportunity for them to pull the old Embrace, Extend, Extinguish.

The WebM video scarcely exists outside a YouTube transcode. H.264 is in a lot of places in the world beyond the web that you will find Windows. For a sampling, try Google Shopping for "H.264." 67,000 hits.

Microsoft realized how dependent OSS projects are on advertising, and tried to find a good way to hurt them? Though rather pointless, as the people who visit sites like Slashdot aren't going to be running IE anyway.

But your employer may be more comfortable with a company that sells a product and not the user.*

It's an attitude that can filter down to others.

* - "With business users, IE6 share has dropped even more substantially as IE8 has the largest usage share of any browser in businesses with 34.1% usage share versus 10.3% for IE6 worldwide in November The Decline of Internet Explorer 6.0

Actually, you're wrong. http://marketshare.hitslink.com/browser-market-share.aspx?qprid=2 Nice try though.

I agree that most Mac users aren't exactly the brightest computer users, but get real, most Windows users don't even know other OS's exist, let alone what an OS is. Mindless flock of sheep, really.

And there you have it.

The attitude that guarantees a declining 0.85% market share for Linux as a client OS. Top Operating System Share Trend, StatCounter Global Stats

The masses may not know Linux, but they have come to know the geek all to well - and they do not like what they see in him.

It is hardly indicative of the internet at large.

http://marketshare.hitslink.com/os-market-share.aspx?qprid=9&qptimeframe=M&qpsp=117&qpnp=25

Mac is 5%. Linux is ~1%. Other is ~3%. Windows is 91%.

It is even more sad if you break it down as:
Windows XP ~60%
Windows Vista & 7 ~30%
Everything else ~10%

It's an uphill battle, and we've still got a ways to go, but Linux in general and Ubuntu specifically has been making great strides here.

Linux is treading water.

In most stats, it is barely visible as also-ran.

Stat Counter Global Stats

I want expecting this.

But the Linux Stat Counter stats for countries like Argentina, Brazil, Germany, The Netherlands, Portugal, Venezuela etc., are really quite pathetic. Either these countries have gone off-line or the FOSS geek has spent too much time listening to his own propaganda.

The picture is somewhat less bleak in Uruguay - one of OLPC's great success stories. But in Rwanda - where OLPC had a confirmed, significant, deployment of 100,000 units - Linux is easily outpaced by OSX and Win 7.

Top Operating System Share Trend, iOS Tops Linux

Even when you factor in Android, the numbers don't change all that much.

OS Platform Statistics

24% Win 7: Up from 0% in Jan 09, Linux 4.5%: Up from 2.2% in Mar 03. The W3Schools stats for Linux are as good as it gets.

I should have posted a link with the stats, sorry. http://marketshare.hitslink.com/browser-market-share.aspx?qprid=2

When torrent support comes equipped on all the major browsers, it can take off.

Well, I am using a major browser (Firefox - almost 23% according to http://marketshare.hitslink.com/firefox-market-share.aspx?qprid=0&sample=28) and when I click on a torrent link, it starts downloading. Admittedly by using an external client, but what is the problem with that?

The big problem for P2P services right now is that many big ISPs don't allow that kind of traffic, and they often don't even tell you so up front. That kind of policies is what keeps it back, not whether it is built into the lazy choice browser on Windows.

If you actually look at the numbers, mobile is the one putting a dent in Windows (and Mac and Linux):

http://marketshare.hitslink.com/os-market-share.aspx?qprid=9

(I think Android and other Linux-based mobile devices go in the 'other'-catagory ?)

As if Linux users never get fed up and abandon it for other platforms, noooo that never happens. I started using Linux on the desktop around Kunbutu 7.10 (Gutsy), because at the time Vista was sucking major balls and Macs weren't that interesting. Recently I bought a ASUS Eee PC 1001PX, and I had to manually upgrade the kernel to a newer-than-Lucid kernel just to have wireless work. The internal speaker played but if I plugged in headphones then nothing. It's 2010 and Linux is still struggling with the very, very basics. And just surfing the net flash sucks less on Windows than on Linux and there's still no usable free replacement, despite gnash and lightspark. Never mind other plug-ins that plain old don't exist for Linux.

I dual boot to Windows 7 and I'm seriously considering abandoning Linux and just run Windows + as much open source software as I can on top. Another reason is games, WINE keeps getting better but if you want to play something on release day it pretty much never works, or there's a load of tweaks and workarounds and glitches. It's great if you have the patience to begin playing a year from now I guess, but every new games exposes new bugs. And I have filed bugs and bisected in git and even got a patch in WINE, it just never ends. There's also other great services I'm missing out on, like free Spotify, it won't work under Linux unless you have the Premium version.

Take a look at this. Linux has the two last months been at its lowest since October 2008. It hit a high of 1.17% and is down to 0.85%. Even if you're so kind as to exclude all non-desktops and just go witn Win+Mac+Linux, it's down to 0.88%. That's called unhappy users leaving. Sure Linux can't die but it can be marginalized again to a bunch of people shouting "I'm not dead yet". The netbook/nettop push that gave Linux is small boost is pretty much gone, all I see now on low-end laptops is Windows, Windows, Windows. The 1001PX I bought should have been an ideal Linux candidate - but it only came with Windows so I had to wipe and install Linux myself.

In fact, I think the whole open source desktop is struggling badly. Firefox which has been the flagship of open source is losing market share now in the last year, while Chrome keeps breaking new records. And Google both makes Chrome and is Firefox's main source of income, how long before they decide to put all the money and push behind Chrome? Yes I know of Chromium but parts are missing so it's no more Chrome than OS X is BSD. OpenOffice, or rather LibreOffice is playing "divide and conquer" with themselves while Microsoft and Apple laughs. The year of the Linux desktop is never if it keeps going like this...

As if Linux users never get fed up and abandon it for other platforms, noooo that never happens. I started using Linux on the desktop around Kunbutu 7.10 (Gutsy), because at the time Vista was sucking major balls and Macs weren't that interesting. Recently I bought a ASUS Eee PC 1001PX, and I had to manually upgrade the kernel to a newer-than-Lucid kernel just to have wireless work. The internal speaker played but if I plugged in headphones then nothing. It's 2010 and Linux is still struggling with the very, very basics. And just surfing the net flash sucks less on Windows than on Linux and there's still no usable free replacement, despite gnash and lightspark. Never mind other plug-ins that plain old don't exist for Linux.

I dual boot to Windows 7 and I'm seriously considering abandoning Linux and just run Windows + as much open source software as I can on top. Another reason is games, WINE keeps getting better but if you want to play something on release day it pretty much never works, or there's a load of tweaks and workarounds and glitches. It's great if you have the patience to begin playing a year from now I guess, but every new games exposes new bugs. And I have filed bugs and bisected in git and even got a patch in WINE, it just never ends. There's also other great services I'm missing out on, like free Spotify, it won't work under Linux unless you have the Premium version.

Take a look at this. Linux has the two last months been at its lowest since October 2008. It hit a high of 1.17% and is down to 0.85%. Even if you're so kind as to exclude all non-desktops and just go witn Win+Mac+Linux, it's down to 0.88%. That's called unhappy users leaving. Sure Linux can't die but it can be marginalized again to a bunch of people shouting "I'm not dead yet". The netbook/nettop push that gave Linux is small boost is pretty much gone, all I see now on low-end laptops is Windows, Windows, Windows. The 1001PX I bought should have been an ideal Linux candidate - but it only came with Windows so I had to wipe and install Linux myself.

In fact, I think the whole open source desktop is struggling badly. Firefox which has been the flagship of open source is losing market share now in the last year, while Chrome keeps breaking new records. And Google both makes Chrome and is Firefox's main source of income, how long before they decide to put all the money and push behind Chrome? Yes I know of Chromium but parts are missing so it's no more Chrome than OS X is BSD. OpenOffice, or rather LibreOffice is playing "divide and conquer" with themselves while Microsoft and Apple laughs. The year of the Linux desktop is never if it keeps going like this...

A few seconds of googling shows you are uninformed:

http://marketshare.hitslink.com/browser-market-share.aspx?qprid=2

IE6 is browser #3 in total market share with 16% share. IE8 is first with 28% followed by Firefox 3.6 with 16.8%.

You can't make the same argument about Netscape Navigator because its numbers are 1%.

I'll change my tune when IE6 finally drops off in usage, but that's only when XP finally falls out of widespread use, which will be in, what ... 3-5 more years?

I don't know where you get your numbers, but ie is only 60% of the web browser market:

http://marketshare.hitslink.com/browser-market-share.aspx?qprid=0

They ARE making money.

They payed Mozilla $61 million in 2006 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mozilla_Foundation)
for 16% market share (http://marketshare.hitslink.com/report.aspx?qprid=0&qptimeframe=Y&qpsp=2006&qpnp=1)

this means the value of 1% of market share for default search (homepage and search bar) is:
3.8 milling per %.

every 1% of market share from IE they take gets them $3.8 million plus some extra (if they pay Mozilla that much, more money is in it).

Every 1% they take from Mozilla is $3.8 million in savings.

at 6.5% market share now, that's a lot of money. maybe not huge relative to their size, but a lot.

Opera at 2.3% share is making a good chunk of money too

current share from:
http://marketshare.hitslink.com/report.aspx?qprid=0&qptimeframe=Y

The stats at w3schools are biased toward technical people, so the numbers aren't necessarily representative. There's another version here:

http://marketshare.hitslink.com/os-market-share.aspx?qprid=11

That shows:

XP: 61.8%
Vista: 14.3%
Win7: 14.4%
OSX: ~4.3%
Other: 5%

I would agree that "hardly anyone" might apply to Vista, but it most certainly does not apply to Windows 7.

Why not? Windows 7 users are still a definite minority.

A minority among Windows users, sure. "hardly anyone", not so sure. There are currently just over twice as many XP users as Win7+Vista users, with the balance changing rapidly from XP to Windows 7.

There are btw already over 3 times as many users of Windows 7 as users of all Mac OS X versions combined.

http://marketshare.hitslink.com/operating-system-market-share.aspx?qprid=10

To be honest, pretty much only an idiot develops for them.

The iPhone has a 0.7% share of the web.

That is within easy striking distance of Linux, all flavors, at 0.93% Operating System Market Share

Impressive, when you remember that the Net Applications stats are global.

Or at worst 84.9%

Marketshare.Hitslink.com

They're losing market share quickly though.

In your dreams, kid:

Top Operating System Share Trend, Top Operating System Share Trend

They're losing market share quickly though.

In your dreams, kid:

Top Operating System Share Trend, Top Operating System Share Trend

1. Apple's computer unit sales have increased more than any other PC manufacturer in the past few years.
2. Apple's margins on their computers is the highest in the industry
3. Apple's profit on computer sales is very high

Apple makes the Apple computer. No one else.

The Apple PC has always been an up-market, high-margin product.

The rest of the world competes for their share of the Windows market - which is still 90% of the PC market - and there are a lot of players here.

5. Apple's been in the smart phone business 3 years and has managed to sweep a segment into majority play

I am not sure what this means.

In terms of web browsing, the iPhone has a 0.59% share of market, the iPad 0.17% Operating System Market Share

The primary purpose of a mobile phone remains the mobile phone call.

6. Apple's iPad, out for almost one quarter, is seen to be eating into low end, very low margin products from other vendors (cough::netbooks::/cough)

I think it has become very clear that the netbook has little to offer beyond a slight increase in mobility.

First of all, WTF is it with the jack off font? You think you're hip making the thing look like a bad bash prompt? Second of all my money is not "tied into MSFT" as I give customers what they want instead of trying to force them to do things my way which is what Linux does. Here is my last conversation with a FLOSSie: "My customers do NOT WANT bash prompts and trawling forums! This is a problem!" /FLOSSie/"but CLI is powerful!/ "My customers DO NOT WANT and don't care! Make it simple and easy to fix problems!" /FLOSSie/"If they would only embrace the power of bash/ walks off in disgust at brainwashed FLOSSie

And here I am talking about desktops and the magic bullet problem, and you bring up...servers? Who gives a fuck? Symbian is number 1 on mobile phones! Yay! Doesn't have a damned thing to do with what we are talking about, which is why Linux is sucking on the desktop, how even machines built with Linux strengths in mind still won't sell with Linux, and how OEMs found out the hard way that Linux on the desktop is a deathtrap. I'm not the the only one saying these things by a long shot, yet we get ignored or ridiculed by a group that brags they got 1% while companies walk away in disgust.

It is a good thing the community "supports" Linux, because if it were a company it would be in chapter 11 right now. And don't waste your breath bringing up server companies because we are talking desktops, so stay on topic. You would think that after sitting in dead lasts for years someone would wake up and ask "what are we doing wrong?" but instead of finding out what the problems are and working to correct it we just see the same tired memes about Linux Security and how Linux is more usable and even you yourself trotted out the just use Wine and Linux supports more hardware along with hurling insults! You know why the call them trademarks? Because it is the same tired old shit we hear year after year AFTER YEAR. Nothing gets better, nothing ever changes, Linux still sits in the basement.

I am a businessman, I WANT to sell your product! I want and believe in free market competition! But instead of working to make a better product, we get instead 6 month release schedule (you HONESTLY think any real QA can get done in less than 6 months? Because I got some swamp land in Florida to sell you buddy!) and insults thrown whenever anyone points out the emperor has no clothes. But don't worry, you can keep your elitist attitude and insult throwing. Myself and every other business that has tried selling your product at retail have realized Linux is a dead end and walked away. Walmart, ASUS, Best Buy, Staples, nobody will carry your product. When no American retailers will touch your product, even for free, it is time to take a hard look and see what you are doing wrong. Will anyone do that? Nope they will delude themselves into thinking CLI is bet

Whatever doesn't involve turning away half your potential customers.

Linux desktop users are generally not "potential customers" of Microsoft, and are an extremely tiny market compared with Windows and Apple desktop users. This thing is actually available to about 97% of web surfers.

Honestly, while I realize that there are some people out there using IE, I almost never make it a priority in development.

I would be interested in knowing who your clients are.

IE's global market share is 60%. IE 8's share alone is 25%. Browser Version Market Share

The mobile platforms remain quite insignificant in terms of web browsing. Operating System Market Share

Honestly, while I realize that there are some people out there using IE, I almost never make it a priority in development.

I would be interested in knowing who your clients are.

IE's global market share is 60%. IE 8's share alone is 25%. Browser Version Market Share

The mobile platforms remain quite insignificant in terms of web browsing. Operating System Market Share

A free and very profitable product.

Firefox makes Mozilla millions, and I imagine Opera does well enough with their share too (I am thinking their paid mobile browser base has shrunk a lot with Android and iPhone). Google is *VERY* good at placing adds people want in front of them, and therefore the millions of users various users have is worth a lot to them. The kick-backs for using google.com as a default front page are huge in that scale. And can support a quite large (well large medium sized anyway) organization ($61.5 million, just from search).

This places the market itself (web browsers) at about $250 Million, the fact that a few players fight over a few percent is not shocking at all.

Opera presumably gets about 6 million a year, not a ton, but I can totally see that supporting a single application shop (thirty developers and overhead).

35% of users are up for grabs (non IE, non Safari, already having jumped to non-default), meaning the market for third party browsers is about 87 Million, this a plenty for three to compete in (Chrome, Firefox, Opera), and everyone to be winning.

If half of Chromes users came from Firefox, i imagine they consider the project a win, saving them 6 million/year, aside from making the web a better place (in their mind), and presumable bringing in revenue if they grabbed people from IE.

sources, poorly researched:
http://marketshare.hitslink.com/firefox-market-share.aspx?qprid=0&sample=28 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mozilla_Foundation -- firefox revenue

Also worth noting, every browser default searches with google.com (aside from IE), google wins for every defection from IE, and presumable pays about $80 million/year to non-IE browsers. It's probably safe to assume they are making some money too, or they wouldn't be paying as much. Even Opera Mini likely generates close to 1 million/year.

I have to ask what you mean by "minority". I hate IE as much as anyone, but the fact is, it is used by more people than all other browsers put together. I don't tailor my view of reality based on what I like, and you should get out of the habit.

Whoa - I went looking for a link to give my claims some weight - and I found this:

http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_stats.asp

I guess if you are only measuring home users and technical users, you might get figures like that! But, when you include ALL COMPUTERS, you get quite different results.

http://marketshare.hitslink.com/browser-market-share.aspx?qprid=0

Microsoft is getting that many licenses, yes. So many people are trying to say that that means the thing is popular. Vista licensed 10 Million units a month in the face of a global recession. What does this mean? That license figures have nothing to do with adoption rates for Windows versions, nor for popularity of the software. It's just a measure of how effectively the company has cowed the industry that enterprises automatically get a license seat of their latest software under Software Assurance and most OEMs purchase a license for every machine shipped whether the machine will even run the software or not, or even if the end-user gets that license. It's a measure of the pent-up demand in a market that avoided purchasing hardware to avoid Vista and just can't wait any more. It's also not new money: Microsoft would pretty much get that money even if W7 was a blank disc.

Where is W7 adoption at really? 13.7%. That's doing pretty well but 1/3 of that was taken from Vista - the widely reviled product people can't get off of fast enough. As a whole Windows share is off by 2% in the past year. That's not a free-fall, but it's not a move in Microsoft's favor either.

The article is about IE9. IE9 will not install on Windows XP. Enterprises looking to migrate to IE9 services and applications cannot do so until they migrate to Windows 7. Application developers can't target the market for services that leverage IE9 technologies until the market moves to a platform that supports IE9. It's a catch-22. It's a real problem and you shouldn't pooh-pooh it.

On the other hand, other standards based browsers use the latest technologies and run on whatever platform you're running, so they make the better target for the application developer.

Gaming is one of the last things keeping people from switching to Linux entirely

Linux has a global 1% share of the desktop. Top Operating System Share Trend

I can't believe that 99% of the holdouts are PC gamers.

No, they're mostly people who don't even know what an OS is. But techy people drive tech adoption, and a lot of young techy people are gamers. I admin a gaming forum, and a lot of random people there say they like Linux but are never going to consider it full-time unless it's as good as Windows for gaming. But that means supporting many more games than Mac does now (let alone Linux), plus having performance as good as Windows – a consistent 10 FPS loss would be unacceptable. So we have a long way to go.

Gaming is one of the last things keeping people from switching to Linux entirely

Linux has a global 1% share of the desktop. Top Operating System Share Trend

I can't believe that 99% of the holdouts are PC gamers.

Not according to NetMarketShare and others. The marketshare is still higher than that.

As a point of reference to how it would affect us... with 17% marketshare, one of my sites has 170,000 unique visitors that would be "left out in the cold" if I did not support IE6. That number is higher per other browser share sites that point to around 20% and around 23%... meaning near a quarter of a MILLION potential lost site visitors/customers.

Perhaps if you run a small site with a few visitors, (let's say 1000), then losing 170 or 200 or 230 of them isnt a big deal (well, to me it would be, but to each their own)... but as it is now, our site is moving to a very big high profile site that gets 10 times the unique visitors... meaning 1.7 million visitors (to 2.3 million) that cannot properly use the site.

Not bothering is thus not an option for us....

Except it's not much use when your 20% of browsers are still on IE6 (stats).

Look at the hype for the iPad, for Android. Notice the FTC looking at Google, Notice no one cares about MS anymore; They're becoming irrelevant.

Hype is a fad.

Hype is noise.

Hype is 0.11% of the web for Android. 0.09% for the iPad.

Relevancy is 91.3% of the web for Windows. Operating System Market Share Relevancy is a trend line that is moving visibly upwards. Top Operating System Share Trend

Apple has staked its future on the high end of the mobile device market, the mobile hardware market. That can be a very precarious perch in times of recession.

Microsoft sells software and services to a much broader spectrum of buyers.

It is lightly exposed on the hardware side.

Look at the hype for the iPad, for Android. Notice the FTC looking at Google, Notice no one cares about MS anymore; They're becoming irrelevant.

Hype is a fad.

Hype is noise.

Hype is 0.11% of the web for Android. 0.09% for the iPad.

Relevancy is 91.3% of the web for Windows. Operating System Market Share Relevancy is a trend line that is moving visibly upwards. Top Operating System Share Trend

Apple has staked its future on the high end of the mobile device market, the mobile hardware market. That can be a very precarious perch in times of recession.

Microsoft sells software and services to a much broader spectrum of buyers.

It is lightly exposed on the hardware side.

You missed Android 0.11%

If iDevice can gather close to 1%, I have little doubt androids and chromes will do the same, if not much more. The rise of Android is phenomenal. When it comes to the Chrome mini-whatevers, price will be an unbelievable temptation.

Kudos to Apple for possibly killing the myth of backwards compatability. People want internet access and media BS. For games, I suspect that is a distant 3rd (if not 4th beyond random apps).

The "walled garden" won't be the death of Apple. The alternative of a similar garden without walls will.

I doubt it.

Operating System Market Share

Windows 91%
Mac 5%
Linux 1.1%
iPhone 0.6%
iPod Touch 0.1%
iPad 0.1%

These are global stats, not US, remember.

Apple's "walled garden" - despite the price of admission - is well on its way to becoming a larger presence on the web than the Linux PC or mobile device.

So... they told Microsoft 5 days ago AND GAVE THEM A FIX...

There are roughly 500 million users running XP.

63% of all PC users globally. Operating System Market Share, PCs In-Use Reached nearly 1.2B in 2008

XP is backwards compatible with many programs written for MSDOS, Win 3.1 and Win 9x.

But protecting the installed base of small business and enterprise applications written for XP is truly misssion-critical for Microsoft. The patch must not break these apps.

It would be lunatic to blindly trust a patch from a competitor -

and it is Microsoft - not Google - that has thirty years experience in its core markets. That knows which apps are likely to break and why.

Between you, me (Flashblock myself), and 2 million iPad owners, "its 'write once, play everywhere' functionality" seems to have lost its luster...

2 million iPad owners = 0.08% of all users accessing the web. Operating System Market Share

Win 7 13%. Vista 15%. Windows, All Versions, 91%.

IE 6 is definitely not the most used browser version by any stats site I've seen.

IE8 is. Depending on which stats site you look at, either FF 3.6 or IE 6 is second.

http://gs.statcounter.com/?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter#browser_version-ww-monthly-201005-201005-bar
http://marketshare.hitslink.com/browser-market-share.aspx?qprid=2

There is one place IE 6 is still king: Corporate networks. They no longer make up the largest share of web browsing though, which is why the other browsers have higher market share.

IE8 is: http://marketshare.hitslink.com/browser-market-share.aspx?qprid=3

Putting a sticker on your product is one thing, but I seriously doubt a lot of harddrive manufacturers would be interested in producing a product that would only function in Microsoft Windows. Especially since it would only work in Vista and 7, which together barely hold a quarter of the market today.

More aggresively -- WINE is one of the best ways for Linux to embrace, extend, and extinguish -- beat Redmond at their own game.

But not very successfully, it would seem:

Top OS System Share Trend [June 2009-April 2010]
  OS Platform Statistics [March 2003- April 2010]

How many FOSS projects - and how many proprietary/closed source programs available for Linux - are ported to Windows or begin as native Windows apps?

OS Share Trends

Jun 2009 Win 7 1%. Linux 1%.

Apr 2009 Win 7 12% Linux 1%

Win 7 dropped 11% from Apr 2009 to Jun 2009. Excellent. Linux on the desktop, here we come.

Oh, I'm sure Redmond is trembling over having lost Dystopian Rebel (714995) and less than 2% of the desktop market in the last two years. They're 3.5% down on web browser stats because users use cell phones to surf the net more but if you look only at the Win/Mac/Linux shares the change is minimal.

OS Market Share

Windows XP 63%
Vista 16%
Win 7 12%
OSX 10.6 2%
OSX 10.5 2%
Linux 1%

Windows ME 0.03%
iPad 0.03%

OS Share Trends

Jun 2009 Win 7 1%. Linux 1%.
Apr 2009 Win 7 12% Linux 1%

OS Market Share

Windows XP 63%
Vista 16%
Win 7 12%
OSX 10.6 2%
OSX 10.5 2%
Linux 1%

Windows ME 0.03%
iPad 0.03%

OS Share Trends

Jun 2009 Win 7 1%. Linux 1%.
Apr 2009 Win 7 12% Linux 1%

True, it is based on open source but it's more than a little questionable to say it could never be the same without open source. They could have licensed Solaris or AIX or some other closed source unixish kernel if they wanted to and still built the same libraries on top. Everybody seems to jump up and down that it got open source somewhere down there but I would say it is fairly irrelevant to the success or failure of OS X. There's a reason that the desktop market has 5.33% OS X and 0.01% OpenBSD.

Everyone knows malware won't run on Linux.

Oh, it'll run, but you've got to give it permission.

No, it's because the malware programmers have little motivation to create software for the 1% of computers that have more qualified admins. If linux reaches 99% of users, suddenly it will have all kinds of software for it which run very well, hordes of people looking for exploits, etc - malware. MacOS is getting more popular, soon it will start having trouble, I'm sure. Market shares are at http://marketshare.hitslink.com/os-market-share.aspx?qprid=9