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Mac Install-Base Shown to Be 16%
Kelly McNeill writes "MacDailyNews has an editorial which summarizes reports from various research groups that analyzed the number of computer users affected by viruses. The conclusion was that 16 percent of all computer users are not affected by viruses because they use Macs. The lack of viruses on a Mac is commonly known, but the interesting thing is the fact that the results finally provide the first set of conclusive numbers which illustrate the Macintosh's install-base. So far only "market-share" statistics are commonly published for the public and do not convey install base. (If for example 2 people are using computers and one replaces his 2x in a 3 year period and the other only does once, market-share dynamics dictate that one demographic has 75% market share while the other has only 25% -- even though install base is still 50/50.)"
OK, I won't worry too much about bias now, though if someone has a reason to think the SPA is off-base, please let us all know. This is truly something to celebrate. Now, let's get the Linux installed base to 16%...
How am I supposed to fit a pithy, relevant quote into 120 characters?
What percent of all computer users are not affected by viruses because they use Linux then?
16% seems a bit much, but I'm impressed anyway. It's great to have these kinds of statistics.
Subject says all. Half the article focused more on one guy's experience in the Mac world as opposed to the topic.
Hmm, the summary of the article seems to include more facts than the article itself. The summary makes a big point of how TFA's 16% number if found from the virus infection percentage. TFA doesn't say that's where the 16% comes from at all. All the article body says is "In addition, the Software Publishers Association (SPA) estimates that 16 percent of computer users are on Macs." The headline says that 16% of users aren't infected because they use Macs, but it doesn't explain that or justify it. Besides, even if the summary was correct, then this would seem a very poor way to guess at install base. The browser's "user agent" header sent to a general interest site like Google would seem a far better way. Admittedly that would be skewed by Mac users using being "forced" to access Google from Windows in a work environment, but still. That seems like it would have to be more accurate than the approach hinted at in the summary. In searching for google stats on this I found on the Mac Daily News site a discussion which included this very topic when the issue of install base was previously discussed there.
Don't vote for Eugene Papansanovich for Congress!
Just because it doesn't have a virus or malware on it, doesn't mean it is an Apple computer. My Laptop is not an Apple, it doesn't have any malware on it (running Linux). My desktop doesn't have any on that I know of, it is running Windows.
I have several other machines of both windows and linux that are completely clean. They aren't apple. I have a Powerbook, that is clean too, but it is an Apple.
don't practice least privilege, and I quote, "continue to run their adware, spyware, and virus removal programs." While .25% of the Windows install base calims they actually know how to use the OS.
It's not that hard.
...if you actually read the RTFA, you'd notice that the 16% statistic comes from the Software Publishing Alliance, not the editorial itself.
In fact, the conclusion of the editorial is the following two points:
1)More people use Macs than most people realize.
2) People who use Macs don't get many viruses.
Shock! Horror! What next - "The Sky is Blue"? I'm a mac user, and am all for increading market share, but this editorial seems rather vapid...where's the news?
This is good news to hear. In a way, it confirms what I always suspected (especially since I keep my Macs longer than most of my equivalent PC friends -- and I'm a real gearhead). When you get down to it, though, I don't really care how much marketshare/install base Apple has, so long as they can keep cranking out the excellent products that they do.*
*Please keep in mind that I do realize the connection between profitability and new product development. All I'm saying is that the numbers could mean less as long as I'm a happy customer. And boy am I happy.
Per Square Mile, a blog about density
but I can't find them nemore
That figure is for the US. There is a world outside US, and macs are not commom at all...
there couldn't possibly be any other operating systems that don't get viruses making up some of that 16%, could there? Oh no, because there's so many viruses for linux and beos and bsd and os/2....
I am trolling
Why aren't there 16% Safari/OSX.*Mozilla users on the web? These numbers are very much made up...
People may buy a Mac, then install Linux or *BSD onto it.
User: What do I need antivirus software for?
Technical support: How many mouse buttons do you have?
User: Ummm.. I can only see one
Technical support: You don't need it then
Mod this up. It almost totally disproves this 'article'.
see how those 5 guys are doing. wait, IM them... they prob dont do much human interaction.
If the say its l33t, then we know its ok.
There's nothing Intelligent about Intelligent Design.
I don't know why someone claimed it as offtopic, but I believe it has some truth to it. Why go for the little treasure?
linky linky doesnt work
Image Properties
Location: http://www.jgiannotti.com/pwned/imagecrash.jpg
Width: 10000000px
Height: 10000000px
Size of File: 82.61 KB (84588 bytes)
Didn't do SHIT to my computer. YOU FAIL IT.
The sky IS blue. But mac users certainly arent 16%. I'd be VERY surprised if they were more than 10%. You'll have great trouble finding a mac in most Asian countries; the mac is America-centric.
So here in N America, running into a mac is a rare event. The enormous bulk installations of colleges and companies are PC. Most of them are Dell, HP or IBM. A mac is more like for certain people with certain tastes, a few college libraries and graphic designing classes. Even the libraries I should say are more than 90% PC.
Mac users do spend $$$ on average more than PC users. Thats partly beause they HAVE to, and macs are more expensive anyway. Which means mac users will spend more on other things like software, monitor etc. Mac users are also more vocal; there arent many pro-PC people around.
"Give orange me give eat orange me eat orange give me eat orange give me you." -Nim Chimpsky
About two thirds of them have no need for the web because they are hard working graphic artists, layout professionals and other people of the gay persuasion.
on my Mac I browse 'trusted' sites with Safari, and 'untrusted' ones with Firefox (adblock). slashdot and most commercial sites are 'untusted' in this sense. but the BBC for example is non-commercial and trusted.
plus, no one has ever changed the way their browser identifies itself to websites have they? oh wait...
An interesting related article and discussion on interpreting Google's zeitgeist OS numbers. And what it might mean for % usage of OS (which for Mac ends up being the 3-6% people usually speak of, 3% from Google's direct number and another 3% from Google 'Other' OS).
Don't vote for Eugene Papansanovich for Congress!
The train leaves the depot and travels east at 50 mph and has two mac users on it and a linux user in the caboose. Another train leaves another depot heading west on the same track at 60 mph with 5 windows users. Which computer user has the virus, and who survives after the crash??
Take the cheese to sickbay, the doctor should see it as soon as possible - B'Elanna Torres, "Learning Curve"
Yeah you are right to point out this for os/2.
Because, oh man! you have no idea how os/2 is so popular these days, I don't understand why they don't tell about os/2 in those stats... Look: the other day I just surprised my grandma installing os/2 on her new computer, it MUST have an important part in those 16% !
Just because a machine has never been infected by a virus or other malicious software is absolutely NO indication of what OS its running.
I've had a PC of one brand or another since they first came out. And every one of my machines has run versions of Windows the majority of the time. I've had the machine I'm typing this from for three years. It runs Windows XP and has since the day I purchased it.
In 20+ years of PC use I have never been infected by malicious software of any kind. Ever.
Whether or not you've been infected is determined more by the component between your ears and less by your choice of operating system.
I want a new quote. One that won't spill. One that don't cost too much. Or come in a pill.
My web site's stats are 1-3% MacOS ( all version ). Even that figure is blown up a bit since a couple of webmaster's use Macs.
:
Anyway full stats
Windows XP 495 60.37%
Windows 98 117 14.27%
Windows 2000 85 10.37%
Windows ME 41 5.00%
Other 22 2.68%
Linux 21 2.56%
MacOS X 13 1.59%
Windows 95 11 1.34%
MacOS PPC 6 0.73%
Windows NT 4 0.49%
Windows 2003 4 0.49%
Windows 1 0.12%
Total 820
Lima India November Uniform X-ray
Working link...
Last week it was Earthlink subsidizing Linux boxes. This week its that 16% of all computers out there are really Macs.
Hopefully next month it is that Google has made some M$ cash cow redundant (and universally available with any browser).
If only Apple would announce free (as in beer) software for the developing world (or x86s), and throw another monkeywrench into Billy's plans.
http://www.thebricktestament.com/the_law/when_to_
Symantec lied to me?!!!
>This is truly something to celebrate.
Yes, I believe that free source advocates should celebrate that a closed source company which doesnt even allow you to fiddle in your own box is doing well.
Open source is the way to go unless its Apple, right?
If you aren't the original poster, it's because "Security Through Obscurity" is a fucking stupid slashbot phrase which is used by idiots to sound intelligent.
If it's secure, it's secure. Fuck it.
If two people replace computers, one 2x as often
as the other, the ratio is 2:1, not 3:1. You
therefore have market shares of 66.7% and 33.3%.
In the WinTel world, could you do this? Or maybe you should ask, 'Do I really want all of that paranoia to go away? Do I really want to spend more time enjoying whatever the hell I do on my 'puter, or maybe I should continue wasting hours every week on security crap that shouldn't be a problem in the first place? Hey. It's just a question.
How is this Winn Schwartau guy a security expert? I have no idea what he's doing, but I barely worry about security on my Windows machine. I probably spend a few minutes at the most each month checking my security with one or two programs.
The key to avoiding viruses and spyware is intelligence. You have to be intelligent enough to realize that you shouldn't use Internet Explorer. Switch to Firefox. That's it. Firefox does an excellent job of protecting the user. Everything you do after that is optional. Once you use Firefox to browse the Internet, you can reasonably expect, provided you don't click every suspicious link to see on Google, no viruses on your machine -- which is coincidentally the number of viruses I have experienced in the last two years.
Can I be called a security expert now?
If you're reading this, stop it.
16 percent of all computer users are not affected by viruses because they use Macs
100% of my PC is not affected by viruses because... the main user is not someone who clicks on just about anything that reaches his mailbox and visits pr0n sites with MSIE!
Seriously, I might send a Linux user a nice shell script that wipes his home folder; if he's an idiot and chmods it in order to run it and *does* run it and loses all of his files, does that make Linux less secure? Or does that make such user an idiot?
Maybe we should stop blaming or praising OS's so much and concentrate on the user base from time to time. Now, of course the typical Linux user will be savvy enough not to destroy his machine, while I'm not so sure about the typical Windows user. But this just shows that smarter people choose smarter OS's, just like smarter people catch fewer viruses than not so smart ones. See the pattern? The "virus catching" is certainly linked to the "OS choosing", but you have to take the third variable into account: the "user cluelessness".
So why don't we stop correlating a variance in "virus catching" to a variance in "OS choosing" and attributing the consequences to the technicalities of the chosen OS? The user plays a far more important role IMHO.
Global warming is a cube.
My '97 PPC is still running Explorer. I tried to isntall Mozilla, and it objected mightily.
I'm too worried about the Intel chips. This is surely one of the signs of the apocolypse. I must consult my pineal gland for action. Eris says that this whole thing is just a joke, Apple isn't moving to Intel chips, but she's a bit gunshy since her last joke was taken much too seriously. She just wanted to make an OS that would show the world that they are using crap, so she influenced the crappiest OS ever built, and lo and behold, it became the most popular.
Hail Eris!
The article is written in the evangelistic fashion mac users are often accused of displaying, and furthermore macs have viruses and backdoors like any other complex system.
.. and certainly not news. But its a big slice of the IT pie you have to admit, and anyone who has used OS X here will understand exactly what the author is saying.
%16.. thats no surprise
OS X works, and it works really, really well. Deal with it.
They have
Now, this data is obviously skewed with respect to the total distribution, since the people who run something like SETI@home are probably more technologically inclined than the average computer user. This would mean that the percentage of non-Windows OSes is higher in this sample. On the other hand, the software for BOINC (SETI@home) is still somewhat Windows-centric, which would in turn increase the Windows share in the sample.
An interesting data point, nonetheless.
You're thinking of the BSA (Business Software Alliance), I believe.
--Ryv
Interesting. Crashed mine. (Windows/Firefox)
I'm pretty certain the lame "HOT HOT HOT" stuff doesn't encourage people to try the url. I only bothered when I saw your reply, and I wanted to see what happened.
I would believe in slightly different rates though. Except of the new hordes of nerds flocking to the mac, a lot of the mac users aren't very tech savvy. It wouldn't surprise if a lot of the installed base of Macs isn't used very much, at least not to browse the web...
I have a really elegant proof for Fermat's last theorem. If this sig was only a bit longer...
The 16% is some figure that someone just uttered, without any evidence or methodology or even source behind it. Without that, it's impossible to determine even what it means, let alone whether it is valid.
Whatever it is, it can't refer to Apple's actual installed based.
Apple market share is about 3% and web statistics generally put Apple users at around 2%. Those figures are consistent, assuming that Macs and PCs are used for about the same amount of time on average and given that people tend to spend more on their Macs.
Even if you make other assumptions, having a market share of 3% and an installed based of 16% is only plausible if the company is in steep decline; Apple may have problems, but they are not in that much trouble yet.
if the definition of "installed base" is someone with a computer who has ___ OS installed, then you could probably also say that windows has near 100% installed base - who doesn't have at least 1 windows computer?
So far only "market-share" statistics are commonly published for the public and do not convey install base. (If for example 2 people are using computers and one replaces his 2x in a 3 year period and the other only does once, market-share dynamics dictate that one demographic has 75% market share while the other has only 25% -- even though install base is still 50/50.)"
I think you would have to be some sort of idiot to think that this applies to PCs vs Macs. I mean, honestly. WTF? Article writer is implying that Mac users don't buy new PCs as much as PC users, and the marketshare must be close?
I work for an ISP. I get maybe 2 or 3 calls from Mac people in a 5 day week. I handle more than 40 calls in a day. And in my professional opinion, you have to be completely retarded to think that PC/Mac usage is anywhere even in the same ballpark to 50/50.
As well, I constantly hear Mac zealots all excited about their new shiny G5 in some overly pretentious colour like magenta or something and how well it interfaces with their iPod. Most PC people I know are more interested in buying a $600 video card for their 5 year old PC.
Given the data points:
- The vast majority of studies estimate the installed base of the macintosh at somewhere around three to five percent.
- One study estimates it at sixteen percent.
The conclusion is:
- The studies estimating at three to five percent must have been doing something wrong
D...id I miss something here?
Irritable, left-wing and possibly humorous bumper stickers and t-shirts
with linux, I think they will eat up a lot of this 16%. SOme max will be reinstalled with linux too, reducing their number further.
I think sales numbers do express a good way to represent what is running. If only 2% of sold systems is from Apple, then their total market share is 2% not 16%. The other (wintel) systems are being moved down the chain too the same way as the Apple systems. So if there is any case to be made (like in detection of less virusprone systems), is that more and more systems are virus safe because of Linux & BSD.
Research with flaws is always easier than research without flaws.
My wife's sketchblog Blob[p]: Gastrono-me
Apple is not as slow/uncommon/expensive/... as the numbers would make you believe. It still has the most annoying users, who just don't get that we don't care. All else equal, I'd still not buy a Mac, simply because I fear I would become a typical Mac user and start evangelizing and annoying the hell out of my friends.
on my Mac I browse 'trusted' sites with Safari, and 'untrusted' ones with Firefox (adblock). slashdot and most commercial sites are 'untusted' in this sense. but the BBC for example is non-commercial and trusted.
plus, no one has ever changed the way their browser identifies itself to websites have they? oh wait...
How does this affect which OS (not UA) is reported? Are you saying that a very significant portion of Mac users are changing their OS id to Windows, and what would be the reason for that?
Didn't crash me. OpenBSD/Firefox
-If God wanted people to be better than me, he would have made them that way.
Or perhaps they also have an intel box, which they use to browse the web because they're sick of sites which discriminate against mac users.. www.raveshack.com being such an example
http://spamdecoy.net - free throwaway anonymous email - avoid spam!
I'm not the original poster (i'm the second poster). And you're right, and this site clearly has alot of bad karma surrounding it.
I have a low profile anti-virus. That's it. I don't scan for spyware, or viruses. No problems. Hell it's even as stable as Linux.
So, again; fuck it all to hell and to those who spread FUD around in articles like these.
One of them is AT&T Natural Voices coming soon for Apple Mac OS X
So cheer up, they only count people buying software, thus most Linux users don't show up hereLars T.
To the guy who modded me down from perfect to terrible Karma - Apple haters still suck
I would be interested in the statistics of user's OS visiting WAREZ sites. We know that these sites are where most of the Spyware and popups come from.
Let's face it, if you downloaded some hot new software for your MAC OX and it requested the ADMIN password to complete installation - hey presto, carte blance to put anything onto your MAC.
Interesting. Here's a site that you and your fellow Mac users may be interested in.
It is always said that there are no viruses on the Mac because it is a better/safer OS. But couldn't this be caused by the type of user alone? I believe there is a very high correlation between buying an Apple and being computer-savvy (or just weird?). Getting infected by a virus usually means some stupid user action (opening an attachment) or not having your patches up to date, both of which are influenced by computer knowledge. This combined with the fact that writers of malware will probably target the biggest install base might be able to explain the different infection rates even with equal number of bugs/level of security. Same story for Linux probably.
karma police: arrest this man, he talks in maths; he buzzes like a fridge, he's like a detuned radio. [radiohead]
Didn't crash mine.
Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8b2) Gecko/20050531 Firefox/1.0+
You do realize that there's probably a majority of computers NOT connected to the Internet, don't you?...
Didn't crash mine (OS X.4.1/Safari 2.0) but it managed to open iChat.
The new name for the SPA is the SIIA:
From asnwers.com:
(Software Publishers Association, Washington, DC) In 1999, SPA merged with the IIA (Information Industry Association) to become the Software & Information Industry Association.
... A study recently showed that at least 16% of the population has stopped opening *.vb files in emails.
I'm the original parent, and what I meant by security through obscurity not being a solution is that just because you've got a relatively small user base, your software isn't any less suceptible.
The same thing could be said with the Windows XP Professional that I've been running. I use no antivirus, and just use the built in firewall. Haven't had a problem for the past few years. Lax attitudes like this are ignorance of the real threat though.
Articles like this that make the conclusion that Mac users aren't affected by viruses are begging for some dirtbag to surprise them all one day when they get bored of messing with Windows users.
%16? Like many of you I'm a computer geek, so I've been around the block when it comes to fixing friends, neighbors, schools, relatives, etc's computers, and I don't know a single person who owns a mac! I know linux users and one guy who owns a sparc box (I used to own one). The only time I've even come in contact with a mac is at my old high school, and they had old crappy ones in Jr High, and even crappier older apple II's in elementary school. Even a neighboring high school which was infected by a worm last year that I had to go from class to class fixing every computer did not own a single mac. I live in the Silicon Valley, and now that I think of it, I know a studio engineer who works for a big radio station around here who I havn't seen in a few years who had a powerbook, and my ex's crazy ass cousin had a G5. Other than that I can't recall a soul who owns a mac.
[...] According to US News and World Report, Macintosh owners buy 30% more software than their Windows counterparts. Further, Macintosh software comprises over 18% of all software sold, according to the Software and Information Industry Association. In addition, the Software Publishers Association (SPA) estimates that 16 percent of computer users are on Macs.
If Mac owners buy 30% more software than the rest and if 18% of all software sold is on Mac, then ~15% of the installed base is Mac. I think it is close enough to 16%.
O this learning! What a thing it is - William Shakespeare
Impressive, brought a fully patched WinXP Pro machine running the latest Firefox to a bluescreen within a minute. I tip my hat.
Making WindowsXP crash is impressive? What l33t sk1llz the kids have these days.
Didn't crash me either.
MSIE on WinXPSP2.
If this actually starts to pan out, i.e. other studies point to the same numbers (and I'm not convinced because Google and other web studies point to a number more like the currently accepted 3%) then it means that there is a huge market for Macintosh software that is being neglected by software publishers.
It would mean that all those vertical market apps that have been windows only would make money for the developers if they were ported to the Mac.
Hmmm, I wonder if virus authors will start trying to target Macs as it becomes more apparent that they have a reasonable share in the market. I also wonder what effect a few consecutive attacks on Macs will have on the market if a lot of users switch mostly based on the safety of Macs being "virus free". If Windows were not the majority OS then malware writers would surely focus on an OS that will cause the most impact, even if it is harder to exploit!
Warning, comments may not have been passed by the sanity department of my brain.
Replying to my own post. I meant the www.halo3leak.cjb.net link crashed. (WARNING LINK MAY CAUSE BLUE SCREEN)
http://www.jgiannotti.com/pwned/imagecrash.jpg is fine on my machine.
Same here (OS X.3.9/Safari 1.3)
--Residential Interior Design
On monogon my web access logs show 12.9% of visitors are using Macs. Last month it was 14%, and I had nearly 3GB of traffic. Admittedly I am only one data point, but from my perspective the number from the SPA doesn't sound too far out of line...
Slashdot's first reaction to VMware
well, didn't crash mine MSIE6 on WinXPSP2.
And you do realise the 16% statistic comes from checking if computers are vulnerable to viruses OVER the web, don't you?
This is strictly anecdotal in nature...but on more than one occasion I've run into people that have upgraded or replaced Windows machines that had begun to seem slow simply from the incredible amount of spyware, adware, malware and random crap they had running in their system tray. This wasn't always especially outdated or slow hardware either. And it isn't always spyware...Raise your hand if you've seen the stupifying number of things running in the system tray on a brand new Sony, HP or . It's mind boggling. But I digress I wouldn't be very surprised to find out that, the reason many Windows users upgrade or replace their computer is simply because of how "slow" it's gotten from all the random crap that accumulates over time in addition to all the stuff that is running in the background straight from the factory. Is part of the reason Mac users don't upgrade as often simply due to less accumulation of cruft?
:)
:)) to prevent myself from trying to make coherent posts to Slashdot at 4 in the morning...
On a slightly different note: I don't think that the reason there is no (or very little) Mac spyware/adware/malware is really only due to installed base. This might be reaching a little far but different operating systems (especially "minority" operating systems) seem to have different feels to their user and developer community. Many people who develop software for Windows seem to be out to make a fast buck, and therefore adware and spyware abounds. It is simply a logical extension of shareware. Even the freeware developed for Windows, usually isn't free for commercial use. Most Windows users wouldn't know what do with source code so it is rarely requested and even more rarely provided. Much of the free (as in speech) and open source software on Windows seems to originate on Linux. The BeOS community was kind of a mixed bag. It was made up of Linux, Mac and Windows users and as such was a mixed bag. A kind of comradarie did seem to prevail though. Users and developers seemed compelled to support their fellow users. There was freeware, some with source available, and the shareware usually either nagged you once in a while or was so reasonably priced compared to it's feature set that it would be considered worth the price. The Linux user community on the other hand seems downright hostile towards anyone who won't release their program under a free license. As such developers either deal with the fact that they can't really charge for software or they put donation links on their web pages. Either way, it seems like very few bother trying to sell closed source software to "Linux zealots."
I can't comment directly on the Mac community because I've never owned a Mac (the Mac Mini might changed that...), but it seems like Mac users in general don't mind the concept of commercial software and are willing to pay a reasonable price for good software. This seems to encourage entrepreneurial programmers to actually develop feature rich programs, knowing that people would be willing to pay for them. This is in contrast to many Windows users who want things that are free (as in beer) but don't care about freedom (as in speech). Now that MacOS is based on *BSD, lots of free (speech) and open source software is being ported as well.
So the point of this long rambling rant:
1) I think Windows users upgrade (hardware) more often because of spyware/adware/cruft
2) I think Windows users are a target of spyware/adware not only because Windows is the largest installed base, but because of the mentality that they don't want to pay for things, yet they also don't care about truely free (as in speech) software
3) I should create some little program (GPL of course
-Mr. Lizard
(I hit preview and realized how much I had actually typed. I don't feel like proofreading it, so hopefully it makes some kind of sense. Must sleep...)
^I'm with stupid.^
X.4.1/Firefox 1.04 - it *tried* to open iChat. Nothing else...
This statistic is clearly pulled from someone's arse, but for some reason you think it's OK because the arseman isn't a well known Mac zealot?
There are several ways to test the validity of a statement, and none of them have to do with who made the statement. In this case, you could ask how the statistic was collected and how large the sample was. You'll notice the number 16% is a fantasy based on an assumption that has no base in any evidence. It's bunk, 'bias' or not.
I can understand how someone would dismiss out of hand something coming from Rob Enderle or a politician, but not how it's possible to accept something just because the source seems neutral. That's just stupid, and shows an incredibly unscientific mindset.
Sure it is, don't be stupid. It works and works very well thanks. I ditched Winblows 3 years ago, never looked back.
I can't personally find a link to the SPA web site, but if it includes shareware developers, and I think it does, this could very easily be explained.
There's a creeping suspicion that the average Mac users spend more on software than the average PC (and by PC in this context I mean Windows on x86, because it's shorter to write) user. Why is this?
Most PCs sit around in offices and do stuff you'd normally do with Office - word processing, spread sheets, emails. Far from all PCs, of course, but definitely *most*.
A sizable part of the Mac installed base are those who do publishing, or video editing, or DVD production, or something with media in general. These people go out and buy font managers, editing software and plug-ins, each probably running up an average of 80 bucks per product, with the actual editing software running from 200 bucks and up, not uncommonly into 500+ territory. People do this on PCs too, but I would bet on the percentage of the installed base being a lot smaller.
Another sizable part of the Mac installed base are those who sit at home and buy lots of shareware. This has a direct counterpart in the PC world, and they're probably about the same size percentage-wise. Note that games fall in the same price spectrum, that the hard-core gamer is likely to spend more on extra hardware (mice, gpu, keyboard, display) than on software, and that piracy probably helps inflate this segment.
And then there's also the fact that, *for whatever reason*, people seem to use Macs longer. Getting three years out of a Mac isn't extraordinary, it's average. Macs also have a higher value on the used market, so there's no rush to sell it.
I think all of this adds up to a skewing of these statistics.
It depends how the OS figures are obtained. From a web server I can't think of a truly reliable way of telling that will always work when e.g. Javascript and Java is turned off. What people tend to use are the OS portion of the user agent string, which can get changed just as easily as the rest of it.
Right now my user agent says "Netscape 6.2 on Linux" rather than "Firefox on Windows 2000" because that works better with some nasty web-based software (ironically, running on a Windows server) that I have to use at work.
They won't come to you to let you fix their Macs because those don't need fixing, I guess.
(Say it like "Bad dog")
Man bites dog=worrisome news. That sort upsets people, so don't print it! People want to know what they already know.
OSX actually prevents the stupid user syndrome by needing a password to install or change any important files. ie Typical of a secure *nix installation. If my stupid users (I probably have a dozen of them easily in the big networks I manage) ever got hold of something from the malware scene they would need an admin p/w. Obviously they don't have that because we know they're stupid and don't give them a chance to break stuff. Case closed. My compnay also makes a small fortune selling anti-virus software that has no real use. The sig files for the OSX anti-virus s/w are always tiny because there are no viruses. But always the management of these places see viruses as a terrible threat because they all have wintel boxes and learn from that experience.
spoonerize "magic trackpad"
D...id I miss something here?
Yes:
"So far only "market-share" statistics are commonly published for the public"
Market share != installed base. Apple does not compete in a lot of markets where Linux and Windows are used. There are machines like frickin' ATMs running a version of Windows.
"He who controls the spice ..."
Where the nerds flock, watch out.
The url redirects to a page on jgiannotti.com, by
Giannotti, Joe Joe@JGiannotti.com
1333 Peachfield Dr
Valrico, Florida 33594
United States
didn't do nuthin. IRIX 6.5.21 ;-)
Now, can you think of any other reason why that may be? Like making an internet connection is the easiest on the Mac compared to all platforms I know of?
you have to be completely retarded to think that PC/Mac usage is anywhere even in the same ballpark to 50/50
Submitter didn't imply that. That figure was an example.
I constantly hear Mac zealots all excited about their new shiny G5 in some overly pretentious colour like magenta or something
Hmm, now this is a lie. Because for years Apple only made machines in white, grey or aluminium.
Most PC people I know are more interested in buying a $600 video card for their 5 year old PC.
I have the strong feeling you are trying to make a point there, I only can't see what that may be ...
Didn't do squat on my Tiger PowerBook... :)
"SETI@Home 2.0.4 was the fastest version of SETI for Macs. It relied heavily on the amount of L2 cache on the processor. Since most modern macs have 512K or 1MB of cahe it was able to produce results far better than a PC of the same MHz. But when 3.0 came all that changed. The L2 cache programming was removed and the speed was based solely on the MHz. So then Macs fell behind in WU times." [...]
"The best part of RC5 is that it is Alti-Vec and multi-processor aware, and Macs crunch data 5 times faster than a PC of the same MHz. It is a great way to show off the speed of your CPU."
Hah-ha ha! Windows 2000 Pro SP4, Opera 8
The Mac users blog about their travel, so the public is aware of the problem and calls the train company to do something about it. Of course they are not able to reach anyone there in a timely manner because their email servers are down to virus problems. So the Linux user has to hack into the railroad system to activate a switchblade and change tracks. The windows users are completely unaware of any impending disaster and post anonymous comments to /. about how the tried to copy a 17 MB file from one folder on their harddisc to another on their freelance gig on a Mac G5.
does the article take into consideration linux guys with apple hardware? i suppose there are many people who own macs but prefer using a good operating system on them.
(If for example 2 people are using computers and one replaces his 2x in a 3 year period and the other only does once, market-share dynamics dictate that one demographic has 75% market share while the other has only 25% -- even though install base is still 50/50.)
Let's go over this: Person A buys a peecee but feels compelled to upgrade later (by buying a new computer) resulting in an 2 peecees purchased while Person B buys a Mac only once. The install base is 50/50 but the market share shows that 2/3 of computers bought are peecees and only 1/3 are Macs. Where did the 75%/25% come from?
Now that we've established that your summary sucked (no offense), should I bother reading the article? It is /.
On another note, in the Astrophysics Department here at Caltech, I'd say something like a fifth of the install base is Windows, the rest being Macs and Linux (with more Mac laptops and linux desktops) and several other non-engineering science departments have many more Macs than Windows boxen but if you want me to believe that a macs make up 16% you've better have some really good data out there that no one else does.
(If for example 2 people are using computers and one replaces his 2x in a 3 year period and the other only does once, market-share dynamics dictate that one demographic has 75% market share while the other has only 25% -- even though install base is still 50/50.)
from my understanding of that sentence, person A has used 3 computers during a period of 3 years, while person B has used 2 computers during that same period. if that's true, it's a 60/40 split, and not a 75/25 split.
i guess it all comes down to the what the author meant by "the other only does once". by saying "does", i assumed he meant replace, since that's the verb of the previous clause. and by replacing once, that = 2 computers.
then again, when the author said replace, he might've meant that person A only used 2 computers during the 3 year interval and person B only used 1 computer. if that was the case, it would've been a 67/33 split instead.
HD Trailers
FYI it effects *some* ATI users only.
Intersting concept of "proof" you have. You do realize that people change their identifying mark on their browser, or use IE on the Mac, or any of a number of possible other explanations?
If a wintel user buys two computers in a three year period and a mac user buys one computer in the same period, what percent of the computers bought (market share) were wintel computers?
a. 100%
b. 75%
c. 67%
d. 50%
e. 25%
So, let's look at the supporting evidence here: an article, quoting a press release, quoting the SPA's estimation that the Mac install base accounts for 16% of personal computers.
I couldn't help but notice that the company that put out the press release has just released a Mac version of its software, and so is naturally going to be talking up the number of potential sales.
I'd like to see the original source of that 16% figure, and how it was arrived at. Until we do see it, this is just so much anecdotal evidence.
It's official. Most of you are morons.
I can't personally find a link to the SPA web site
Not surprisingly, they ceased to exist in 1999 or something, when they became SIIA. The article references SPA numbers in combination with SII numbers, which seems more than a bit strange.
As most of this article, and the mind blowing pice of critical thinking the story summary is.
My UA:
Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; PPC Mac OS X Mach-O;en-US; rv:1.7.8) Gecko/20050511 Firefox/1.0.4
I don't think that the reason there is no (or very little) Mac spyware/adware/malware is really only due to installed base.
Of course it isn't. It's because of the way IE is integrated into the desktop the HTML control has to guess whether a document it's opening is trusted or not, so if you can trick it into thinking your spyware is a local file you can get local user access. Microsoft tries to pop up a warning dialog when you're in a gray area, but there's so much gray area that people get used to clicking "OK" automatically.
Of course Apple has started to open up the same opportunities, first by having Safari "open safe files after downloading", then by treating Widgets and software installers as "safe files", and finally by using a dialog instead of backing out the bad behaviour. It's nowhere near as bad as it is in Windows, but it's worrying.
TheCounter shows just 2% usage share for Mac OS. Combined with the 1-2% usage share for Safari reported by OneStat and 1-2% "other" browser usage reported by WebSideStory, it's hard to believe Mac OS has 16% of the installed base of desktops. Maybe the vast majority of Mac users don't use pre-installed Safari, or haven't upgraded to Mac OS X yet, or just don't browse the web nearly as much as other OS users?
What a fool believes, he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.
This article is total bullshit. I can personally vouch for viruses on the mac. Learned that the hard way back on 7.5. Don't know about the newest OS X but I seem to remember there being one being reported on /. a year or so ago.
Linux is really boring from an os standpoint. Now Plan 9......
Eh, I'm not impressed. All it did was try to render an image at width="9999999" height="9999999". Definitely shouldn't crash any machine, but if it does, it's an OS exploit, not something ATI could fix (as a sibling poster mentioned).
I maintain three different websites, and the percentage visitors using a Mac for all three sites always ranges between 3% and 6%. This corresponds with the usually cited figures.
So presumably it tries to change your AIM status as well.
Don't know about the newest OS X
Well, I do. There are zero viruses in the world for OS X.
I seem to remember there being one
You remember wrong. There was a port of a UNIX rootkit floating around, and a couple of theoretical exploits based on holes Apple patched (albeit clumsily) quickly. A rootkit is software that's used after one's already broken into the computer... it's useless without a way to get it into the computer in the first place.
What you remember is probably that Symantec claimed that there WOULD be viruses and spyware on OS X, with no actual evidence. They've made the same claims before for Pocket PC and Palm OS when they were trying to push their antivirus solutions for those. Nothing has EVER happened to people who ignored any of these attempts by Symantec to use FUD to push their product. But... people have had their systems damaged by antivirus software on all these platforms.
Machine was unresponsive for about 30 secs, hard disk thrashed away, blue screen.
Great.
You are what is known as a "statistical outlier".
Just be aware that you are the rare exception, not the norm. The statistical facts however indicate that you are full of __it.
You suggest that people get infected by viruses because they're stupid, this is not the case, most virus infections are not the user's fault. Whether you are infected by a virus or not has almost everything to do with your OS.
I know that the corporate penetration of Macs is understandably small, and business PCs are a huge percentage of the total pie. I would like to see some statistics on the U.S. install base for home users. I would venture to guess that the 16% figure is not too far off the mark in the home market.
What do you expect? He thinks he goes to CalTech... ;)
Opera 8 (Windows XP) holds up just fine.
Yeah, but that doesn't do anything for the crashing part. :-P It's just trying to spread the havoc while your machine goes down in flames by putting up an away message with the address in it.
I have a Geforce 4.
How on earth is man bites dog news?
If you go to any baseball stadium on any day with a game, you can find thousands of men and women biting into dogs, usually with ketchup, mustard and on a bun.
I don't know where these numbers come from, but my web site demographics are mostly home users under 35 years old. Most of my users are "named and not anonymous".
In a nutshell, we find that Mac usage has grown slightly over the past year, but not by huge percentages. In addition, we find that approximately 15% of our user base is Mac (on a per-user basis).
Windows still has the remaining 384%.
Free, legal music for iTunes users.
"Market share" often implies number of users, not number of computers sold, depending on the context.
Question: If you have one Wintel user, and one Mac user, what percentage of users use Wintel computers?
a. 50%
I agree, it's a very silly question/statistic when you put it that way, but the submitter does make a point, that number of computers sold does not equate to percentage users of a platform.
The user agent info you mention is nearly useless for these purpouses, and is probably responsible for the incorrectness of many user base statistics about non-Windows platforms. Mac users have been using settings in their browsers or third party shareware for years to "spoof" web sites that "require" IE X.Y or "better" (and are set up to refuse to function on anything else) but work just fine if your browser's "user agent" information says it is IE X.Y for Windows. The problem with changing these settings is that most of us who change them at all need or want to visit these wretched web sites often tend to change the setting and leave it there, thus reporting another copy of IE for Windows to lots of sites, even though it's a misstatement the user has been forced to make in order to use another site. Admittedly this practice doesn't seem quite a prevalent or easy to do now as formerly, but I'm sure it's being done, and with the longer usefull lives of Macs (including the one that I'm using now) there's probably a lot of "liars" out there. Also, although I can't say so from experience, I would immagine that there are quite a few Linux boxes out there issuing false "user agent" headers for the same reason.
From a fellow Brazilian, Mac Minis are bound to change that - sure, R$2,890 is not exactly cheap for a compy sans keyboard/video/mouse, but with the financing options, the Mini could stuff my socks at Christmas.
(For the non-Wall-Street type guys - R$2,890 ~ US$1,100 - RIDICULOUSLY overpriced, but anyway)
Dear aunt, let's set so double the killer delete select all
According to US News and World Report, Macintosh owners buy 30% more software than their Windows counterparts. Further, Macintosh software comprises over 18% of all software sold, according to the Software and Information Industry Association.
I find these numbers more convincing since the sales figures on software are directly quantifiable if you assume that the levels of piracy on windows and macintosh are comparable. For example lets' assume no one pirates software.
in that case if the install base was about 13.5% then if mac users buy 30% more software per machine then that brings the purchase rate to about 18%.
Yet the google zeitgeist put the number somewhere closer to 5%. How to we explain this? Well what if windows users typically had more computers? maybe at work they have a windows desktop and a laptop AND THEY SHARE THE SOFTWARE, whereas the home macintosh user has only a single computer. In that case there could be more Windows machines yet less software sold per machine.
Then one can asume that home windows computers may pirate more software.
SO maybe this explains the difference. People replace windows machines more often and keep the old ones around. Macs tend to have longer useful lives and less "bit rot" characteristic of an aging dll and registry poisoned windows machine and so when you replace them they are truly outdated and get junked.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
In my experience, ONLY getting three years out of a Mac IS extraordinary. I typically see three years as the minimum length of service for a Mac, typical is more like 5 years. I know plenty of people who are using Macs from 7 or 8 years ago and they work just great for everyday tasks such as word processing, web, and e-mail. So well, in fact, there is almost no pressure to upgrade unless you are doing cutting edge games, programming, data crunching, video, or 3D work.
Sapere aude!
Obviously, this can't be true. If Macs had a 16% userbase, it'd be way easier to get Mac warez!
1) There are people who respond to this article who keep referring to a Blue Screen Of Death. I haven't seen one of these in about 5 years. This either means that a) the people referring to the BSOD because it's a much talked about windows occurance that was a feature on an OS that is at least 6-7 years old and don't realize that it just doesn't happen on the newer OS's becuase they are a) lying mac fanbois or b) they are using really old windows software and are stupid.
2) People are assuming that since a seemingly impartial source is pulling a number out of their ass, it must be accurate.
3) People actually think that the MAC is impervious to virii and malware. Anyone ever take a root kit and run it on the mac? Works quite nicely. I've never seen a virus for the PC as powerful as a r00tkit for *nix. Someone with a little programming experience and the ability to execute a script can write a virus for the mac. Quite easily. Mac folks, you day is coming. Enjoy it while it lasts.
4) People don't seem to understand that Windows is no Mac is no Linux. They are not interchangable. I have a Mac and I have a Windows Box. I love OSX. I love the look and the feel. What I don't love is the amazing lack of software to do anything that interest me that I Can't already do on an XP box. Outside of Photoshop and Final Cut, the 64 Bit Opteron beats the crap out of the G5 hands down for abou half the price. I'm still looking for a FREE Ftp program for my MAC other than the command line. WTF people?
5) I appreciate that people are idealistic and are willing to make decisions based on some screwy ideal they have about what they think makes a better world, OS, et al. But being idealistic doesn't mean that you are automatically right and in a better place morally. In most cases, you are just a simple minded ecentric that people don't understand and therefore are given the street cred that you are "edgy", "cutting edge" and "visionary". It's one reason most folks group MAC users in with the Vegans, Goths, and Envrio-freaks. Face it, you're just a little wacky and think you can actually change the world with a rhyme and a different point of view. You can't. Just deal with it.
Karma means nothing to me, so suck it...
Slowed my computer down a ton (And put me away...), but that's about it. Mozilla 1.7.5
I hate grammar Nazi's.
consider yourself retorted.
butthead vendor butthead vendor butthead vendorOS X != Safari.
There's lots of browsers for OS X too, just like Windows != MSIE and Linux != Konqueror
Opera, for exemple, is available on a lot of platforms.
Macintosh owners buy 30% more software than their Windows counterparts. Further, Macintosh software comprises over 18% of all software sold, according to the Software and Information Industry Association. In addition, the Software Publishers Association (SPA) estimates that 16 percent of computer users are on Macs.
o ut-computers' stereotypical Mac user, I think it is likely that a much greater percentage of Mac users over other OSes don't have the interest, inclination, or, ahem, ability to install a SETI@home client so I would expect a deceptively low statistic there. 2.3% is probably as ridiculous as 16%.
First off, I wonder: Do Mac owners actually buy 30% more titles or do Mac owners pay 30% more for the titles they get, Mac being a boutique brand with less retail competition? But, anyway. Assuming they do buy 30% more software and that software comprises 18% of all software sold, that is 130% of 13.8%, not 16%.
As someone who downloaded both Ubuntu and the lastest Knoppix yesterday, it is clear that this story is flamebait since it totally ignores linux in favor of market share while extrapolating that market share into a statement about total computer usage. Wasn't there an estimate last year that there was about a 5%/4% worldwide linux/Mac total share that actually had linux ahead of Mac? On the other hand, considering the 'just-need-to-get-my-critical-creative-innovative -masterpiece-composed-without-knowing-anything-ab
If nothing else, I think the statistic about software sold is interesting. A more heterogeneous OS market is only to the better and if the figures actually demonstrate strong Mac growth in the last year, that is great.
This did not do anything to my browser (konq 3.4) It's just a pic of a moron with a paintball gun.
I don't see why that should be so surprising. I use a Windows XP or Debian box at work. I do lots of google searches related to my job. Constantly need to look up error messages which I have never seen, and things like that.
At home, I use a Mac. I read my email, and slashdot. And that is about all the web surfing I do at home. So, my personal "install base" is that I regularly use one PC and one Mac. But, my pasge views are far far higher on the PC, particularly at a place like google.
Now, somebody who uses a Mac professionally is more likely to be running Final Cut Pro, or something like that. Their job doesn't demand much web browsing. If they have a problem, or need a driver update, they call me, and I track it down for them. They will use whatever they have at home for the majority of their web browsing.
Also, I know many people who hang onto ancient Macs which couldn't run OS-X, and would be a glorious adventure to get on the web. I know people who have PC's of the same vintage, but it seems more common with Macs.
Sorry, but your friends interpretation of google zeitgeists OS numbers are completely bogus. He claims OS stats do not come from browsers. Well, news flash your browser sends in it's request information like: (browser type, os type, browser version, etc...)
So, it is more then likely that the huge "other" group came from any of the following and then some:
A. college students writing crawlers to scrape google (me being one of them)
B. Commerical sites scrapping google results
C. Malware scrapping google results
D. thrid party browsers
Any of the 4 could come from any operating system. Including mac, windows and linux. Now add xulrunner to the picture, I get to define my useragent however I like.
Oh yeah i'm an anonymous coward so mod me down!!
2% is about right. 16% would IMHO be good for competition but that's a pipe dream for Apple. The idea that is 16% is laugable. If that's true then Linux desktop use is at 13%.
If you wanna get rich, you know that payback is a bitch
I'm heading into year 5 (maybe 6??) with my Dual G4 500. If it wasn't for the fact that DOOM3 is out I wouldn't even think of upgrading. My dual is awesome. BTW, if Apple's *installed* base were 1.6% or less then who in in the wintel world would even *know* how Apple is? My parents don't even know what Linux is - as far as they know, PC's are Apple and Windows (not Dell, Compaq, Sony etc, WINDOWS). So 16% of the installed base sounds about right. How many wintel users have bought a new windows PC at work or at home in the last 5 years? I work from home coding rich internet apps in Flash MX Pro and been doing so on the same $2000 investment for 5+ years. Far as I see it, not only do *I* win, but it really puts a dent in the rumors that PC's are cheaper than macs. My own FATHER has bought 3 PC's in that time!
If you would like to call him... see superpages.com ;)
A. Giannotti (More Info)
1333 Peachfield Dr
Valrico, FL 33594
(813) 643 - 8295
Blew up Firefox + XP SP2 + NVidia without even a bluescreen... it just reset the box.
The error report apparently was that the graphics driver exploded, but if it happens to ATI too it's definately an OS bug - userspace should *not* be able to cause out of bounds information to be sent to a driver.
You data point is biased. It seems to be a site about photography. Which means most of the interested parties will also be interested in photography and many artists/photographers use mac's.
Many, many different sites see about 3%-6% mac visitors. This number conforms with the market share numbers even with the alleged longer lifespan of macs. So 16% does seem to be pulled out of someones anal cavity.
"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy."
I host over a dozen sites and well over 80% of visitors are running OS X/Safari. How is this possible? The sites I host are promotional sites for fine artists and most people in the art world use Macs.
My point is that the sites used to compile usage data don't take into account any of the various niches where Macs, or Linux boxes for that matter, are in abundance. These sorts of sites would dramatically skew the average upward.
While its clear from this article that that G5 is reasonably state of the art, its clear the BSD subsystem underneath OS X needs a lot of work. Its the bottleneck.
So can we can OS X is the dumb blonde of operating systems? Gorgeous, but dumb as a post.
You need to remember, what that shows is that the number of website visits by Mac users is 3% of the total number of website visits.
That means that if mac users spend only a small portion of the time online that PC users do, you'll get fewer website visits.
Since a huge portion of the installed base of PCs is on the desks of American workers who don't *really* have all that much to do on their computers during the work day, I'm not startled at all. When I've had low-level office grunt work jobs, I've still had a PC to serve for intraoffice mail. That meant whenever I wasn't actively running some errand, I could browse the web. Secretaries are very much in the same boat. Maybe we shouldn't browse the web, but we do.
Most Macs in the workplace aren't purchased just so there will be a computer on the desk. They are purchased to get a certain job done. The Mac used in prepress, like the PC used in coding, spends a lot less time browsing CNN and a lot more time doing actual work. Now that I'm higher up the totem pole, this is what's happened to me. I spend much less time at my computer trying to look busy and much more laying out brochures.
This probably doesn't account for the whole 16% to 3% discrepancy, but it takes care of quite a bit. It would be startling if the Mac web tracking *did* match the total Mac install base.
The only browser/OS market share statistics I trust are the ones based on my own first-hand experience. All the others tend to ignore important relevant criteria, produce wildly differing results, and are often colored by ideological and/or financially-motivated bias.
Based on first-hand empirical evidence, it's perfectly clear that Mac users make up about 40% of desktop computer users, and about 60% of laptop users, and that approximately 75% use Firefox as their primary browser. Among Mac users, Safari and Firefox use is approximately 50-50%
Of course, this was the same method I used to predict last year's Democratic landslide...
Except of the new hordes of nerds flocking to the mac, a lot of the mac users aren't very tech savvy.
Where do you get this? In my experience and from a lot of conversations, average Mac users are more tech savvy than your average PC users. They tend to know both Macs and Windows (job requirements, etc.) and like Macs more because of it. Mac users actually are more likely to install new apps and use them to be creative and have fun too and I am not talking about installing games or stupid skins on them either. They are more open to experimentation after successfully use iMovie and such, while a lot of PC users are afraid to do anything beyond email and web browsing. A lot of PC users actually thinks that computer, Windows and the Internet are synonyms.
You may think that because Mac OS has a reputation of easy to use that Mac users do not use their brain to use Macs, but you are wrong.
...that Mac Users are by far the best Software customers. They feel they're making a safe investment when buying it. (And they have more trouble getting pirated software)
I've spent more money on non-game software for my half year old iBook than for any other computer I've owned (and own).
Flash MX 2004 Pro and Lightwave 8 easily mount up to orders of magnitude in software costs.
Opposed to that, measuring productivity of Wintel and Mac in money earned I'd say the mac is about two to three times more productive. And after moving from PC Linux as my main workhorse to Mac OS X I must say that Linux doesn't cut it to good either.
Allthough I still like a good solid KDE 3.4 or E install like everybody else. But considering the fuss you have to go through to get a decent PC (good components that fit each other) up and running with a decent enviroment (good Debian Install or a beefed up, secured and patched Win2k) I must say I'm sticking with the Mac.
So be it that a current PC is faster. A 20" iMac, sans noisy ugly box with zero hard and software hassle is the better choice in most cases other than extreme gaming. Buy, unpack, turn on -> works.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
Rendered fine here... who's that ugly fucker in the picture?
BTW, if Apple's *installed* base were 1.6% or less then who in in the wintel world would even *know* how Apple is?
Apple spends an enormous amount of money on advertising and marketing. Check their annual reports.
Didn't crash me (Safari/Tiger) but strangely enough, it launched Adium (IM client) upon closing the browser tab.
Here is the correct breakdown:
If for example 2 people are using computers and one replaces his 2x in a 3 year period...
Meaning person A buys 1 original and 2 replacement = 3 computers in 3 years.
meaning person B buys 1 original and one replecement = 2 computers. does in this context refers to the verb replace So, the total purchased computers in 3 years is 5.
Thus, the marketshare is split 3:2 = 60%:40%. The install base is still 1:1=50%:50% (each person has only one working computer).
Going quickly through the logs of all the various sites I administer, I see 10% (as a round number) being the average for Mac users. As someone else pointed out, the fact that your site discusses photography may (and it's a bit of a stretch) bias it toward Macs, but your site's numbers aren't too far off from mine. (Plus, most other installed base quotes put the Mac at around 8% - 12% or so -- 16% is the highest I've seen).
Mini. 512MB, B/G, Tiger, BlueTooth, LCD TV.
P0wnz.
ramsinks.com
Absolutely no effect on KDE/GNU/Linux running CVS Konqueror... A picture of some guy & a bike scaled up to a huge size...
Luke-Jr
That only matters if a significant number of users change the ID.
So which category do I fit into then ? Windows XP, fully service-packed and with a single application installed (Xilinx Foundation, approx $2500, it's all I use the machine for), BSOD yesterday after running a place-and-route for approx 10 hours. I would have used the linux box but it has been busy running a similar PAR for about 2.5 days now. Identical machines, same software, one crashes, the other just carries on working...
No, you're assuming they're assuming that. I read it as 'hey, these guys *aren't* paid to lie - fancy that!'. The truth (or lack thereof) of the article rests on its merits.
It works quite nicely, how ? Do you have any example rootkits that work remotely ? As far as I'm aware, a rootkit is only a threat when it can be installed remotely via an exploitable hole in the system. If you have root access to the system, you don't need a rootkit to make it vulnerable! Just as a data-point, linux rootkits won't work on a mac, for the obvious reason that they're running very different software and potential exploits will therefore be different!
Well, this is down to personal taste of course, but I tend to use commandline ftp even on a windows box... I'm a unix-orientated guy and that's the way I prefer to work. OTOH, you can just type 'ftp://user@host' into the 'Finder->Go -> Connect to server' dialogue box and it'll open up the directory just like any other Finder window. It works the same way for 'smb:', 'nfs:', 'afp:' etc. etc.
Sure, XP has *more* software, and there are a few areas where the Mac still lacks (eg: EDA, hence the XP box), but for the 90% of people who don't fall into that category, it's there waiting for the taking.
Physicists get Hadrons!
"Mac/Cowhand-A is a proxy Trojan for the Mac OS X platform. The Trojan may copy itself to the user's Preferences folder. In order to run itself on startup, the Trojan may add itself to the user's Startup Items. The Mac/Cowhand-A Trojan horse allows remote hackers to use an infected computer as a proxy to connect to the internet. By using the Trojan hackers can disguise their real location because the connection can only be traced back to the infected computer." Appeared in April 2005.
"AplS/Fromr-A is an OS X AppleScript Trojan that attempts to delete all files recursively in the user's home directory." Appeared in 2004.
"Dubbed MP3Concept (MP3Virus.Gen), the Trojan horse exploits a weakness in Mac OS X where applications can appear to be other types of files, according to the company. Intego told MacCentral today that the code is hidden in the ID3 tag of the MP3 file. The code will only activate when clicked, but once it is, Intego warns the Trojan horse has the potential to delete all of a user's personal files; send an e-mail message containing a copy of itself to other users; and infect other MP3, JPEG, GIF or QuickTime files." Appeared in 2004.
Note that these viruses exploit some of the same classes of vulnerabilities seen under Windows. The first one relies on a MacOS X hole that allows any unprivileged program to specify that a program should be run at startup. The second comes from implicit script execution. The third is a file type spoof. Those are all very similar to Windows attacks.
Note that these are all "Mac features", not "UNIX features". Apple put in "ease of use" features without considering security, just like Microsoft.
I have a Mac, but I say it's no more than 5% tops. I would say it's closer to 3-4%
The only problem is that browser statistics in no way represent install base. It only gives you an accurate percentage of what browsers visit particular sites. Here's two major problems:
Neither one had an affect on my system, Linux /Mozilla.
I can't afford a sig!
Today's top-range graphics cards are not AGP 4x - it was dumb of me to choose old technology as an example - they are at least AGP 8x and already designed for PCI Express.
the way to determine if a machine is a Mac is a little screwy...
I have a windows machine running XP. I haven't had a virus in over 3 years... and I know plenty of people that fall into this same category. So did they count my machine?
You're generally correct about businesses.... but it really depends on where you work. I've been to a number of print shops in town, and almost all use about 50% Macs. Lots of newspapers use primarily Macs too. (Granted, our local paper seems to be migrating to PCs because of how cheap they can buy Dells and the like... but the writers still use primarily Macs as their notebooks and home desktops of choice, and they generally whine and gripe about the corporate change in course.)
I've also seen a few dentists and chiropractors who use all Macs in their offices. They're a minority, but they're out there. There are a few specialized packages for Mac OS X just for these fields.
Because a lot of web sites only work right when the client is identified as Internet Explorer on MS Windows, people set their Firefox and Opera and other browsers to identify themselves as Internet Explore running MS Windows. I'm sure many of those people leave it as the default just so they don't have to deal with it. Browser statistics would be useless with respect to identifying an installed base. You're not even addressing situations like when people might use computers in a music studio or something else that doesn't require being on the internet.
There's a certain cache to owning a Mac these days, in particular by people that pronounce "cache" with 2 syllables.
If one only looks at sales, then I can see why the installed base numbers could be off.
I buy a new mac every 7 years. I bought my first, a 128K Mac in 1984. Although I added an extra floppy and a hard drive and upped the memory to 512K, it was mostly useless after seven years. But, it still worked and we used it for some games, word processing and some graphics.
Then in 1991 we got a Mac IIsi. It worked well and carried us into the Internet age.
It was still working fine, but in 1998 we splurged and bought a new 233 MHz G3. It's still working fine. I did upgrade the disk drive to 40G and added a USB card a couple of years ago. I run System 9.2 and it still handles 95+% of the stuff that one might want to do on a computer. I've got gobs of software that I could never afford to replace with new stuff.
By the way, I'm not a neophyte who never uses his computers. They get turned on in the morning and off around midnight every day of the week. We were one of the first families in the RTP area to get on cable. Our computers are used a lot.
Now that it's 2005, we're due for a new computer. What do you think I'll buy? I don't think people get this kind of milage out of WinTel PeeCeez.
The vast majority of studies estimate the installed base of the macintosh at somewhere around three to five percent.
Incorrect.
The vast majority of studies estimate the market share of the Macintosh at somewhere around three to five percent.
Market share is about current sales volume relative to sales of other products.
Installed base is about deployed systems relative to other deployed systems.
If I own four Macs and buy a PC, then PCs have 100% market share in my home, but 20% of the installed base.
The article never said that people who don't get viruses are using Macs. It said the people who are using Macs don't get viruses. There's a very big difference.
In all honesty, Macs and Linux remain virus/malware free due to their limited install base. The effect of a virus targeted at Windows is far greater than the effect of a virus targeted at Macs and Linux. If the install base rises for both of these to a comparable level to Windows, we'll start seeing more and more malware targeted at Mac and Linux.
I've been running Windows on my desktop for many years now. I've only gotten a virus once, and it was due to hooking up my computer to an unprotected (and unfortunatly, infected) network. I knew the risks when I did this, and paid for it. Spyware and other types of Malware come along now-and-then, but a quick run through some removal tools once a month (if even that) is all it takes to get rid of those. And more often than not, as long as I'm aware of what I'm installing, it typically dosn't come around for months at a time. I hardly see where the "hours every week on security crap" comes from in the second quote in the article.
I work around 30+ programmers and various other help desk folks and support teams....of which most of them have a computer at home and at least half of them have laptops.
Not a one of them has a mac. I personally do not even know anyone who owns a mac.
On the other hand -- I am always hearing people talk about how they run Linux at home.
16% is way overblown. Now maybe 16% of Intel PC owners own an Ipod, I would find that a little easier to believe.
(+1 Funny) only if I laugh out loud.
3-6% mac, and that's probably on 2003 and early 2004 numbers. This article today is talking about first quarter 2005.
Great job moderators, once again. The parent is brilliantly interesting, huh?
The Software & Information Industry Association hasn't been the Software Publishers Associtaion since the last millennium. The estimate that the macs account for 16% of personal computers is, at the very least, 7 years old!
just displayed a 100000x100000 image on my Firefox/MacOSX box. Also tried to set my away message in aim to something lame. (but I told it no to launching the application).
Nice try though. I guess your trick is unsupported by Macs.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
Check out stats here.
More info on googledot from a slashdot poster here.
That is becuase there is code to control your AIM program in the website (aim:goaway?message=brb,+im+at+http://jgiannotti.c om/pwned).
Bi-annual = biennial = every 2 years. Semi-annual = every 6 months.
My, it's taking everyone awhile to get this. This is not about Halo 3 pics. This thing will crash you XP box, but on Mac it is solid. This is for all the anti-OS X folks out there, and the grandparent is making a statement about Windows.
Having read page one and not seen it noted, I'd just like to point out that at the bottom of the article is links to 4 previous articles where Mac user base is estimated at 8-12%. I find this pretty reasonable.
Mac's are pretty expensive, and for most intents and purposes they should be able to run for 5 years or so. It is not my personal experiance that unices demand as much more performance as windows does from upgrades, as well as the subtle point that most mac users are not gamers (ie. most computer gamers are likely windows users or own a console).
Also there is a larger 2nd hand market for macs. A PowerMac from 2 years ago will still be a pretty nice machine for a lot of people - while a 2 year old dell precision machine will feel dated with windows xp sp2.
Anyway, I personally believe that Windows installed userbase is someplace around 80-85 worldwie, and I don't think it's a stretch that Mac has 10-12 percent - afterall it is a bit more mainstream then os/2, linux, bsd or sunos, which would account for the rest 5-10 percent.
No it doesn't. The 16% figure came from SPA, and was cited by the virus article. We don't know the methodology used to determine the SPA's numbers, though based upon their constituency, I would assume they were basing it on software sales (which would exclude many FOSS machines from the numbers).
Macs are affected by viruses and other malware, just not the same ones PCs are afflicted with.
Macs have their own collection of viruses that numbers in the thousands last time I checked. Admittedly that's just a drop in the bucket compared the PCs quantity, but to say they are immune to viruses, or have none at all is like saying South America is Disease Free because they don't have any cases of the Hong Kong Flu.
Macs are NOT virus free, they just have less. The scum that make the infectors don't target macs a lot because of two primary reasons. First, there are not anywhere near as many macs. (You want to hit quantity, and targeting a 16% or less populace won't get it.) Second, most of them don't have macs. (You write what you know on what you have, so if you aren't a mac user with a mac, you sure can't write a mac infector. Oh, and for the smart @@@es out there who will bring up certain techniques to do just that, remember, we aren't talking Platform Gurus here, just lowlifes that can barely write code in the first place...)
You'd think researchers and slashdotters wouldn't fall for such glaringly false urban myths.
eStoppe making fun of my testicles! Windows 98 has feelings too.
Note that these viruses exploit some of the same classes of vulnerabilities seen under Windows. The first one relies on a MacOS X hole that allows any unprivileged program to specify that a program should be run at startup. The second comes from implicit script execution. The third is a file type spoof. Those are all very similar to Windows attacks.
Uh, these are not viruses. A big clue is the fact they all say "trojan" in their description. A trojan is not a virus, becase viruses spread by themselves, and trojans require the user to open a file, run a scripts, ect (read: user stupidity) to do their damage.
Also, the fact the the MacOS has some of the same class of attacks possible as a Windows PC, does not mean the MacOS is as insecure and as prone to viruses as Windows.
If you are interested asking Omniture about the discrepency, feel free to contact me privately.
But then one of the novice windows users gains administrator access, and thinking the two gorgeously rendered trains on the screen are a part of a game, he sends them careening toward each other.
No one survives. Not even the hobo on the side of the tracks using OS/2.
When they compare the units sold in the x86 world, what are they counting? Windows Licenses, CPUs, Motherboards, full systems, or some combination of these factors??
Back when I used x86s, I frequently upgraded CPUs and motherboards, so my few systems could have shown up many times in the statistics. But, only one ran Windows, most ran Linux downloaded as an ISO online. So, counting OS licenses would not have shown mine at all.
I am primarily a Mac user now, and I have kept my PowerBook (without upgrades) for a lot longer than any PC I owned.
Depending on how they count the systems, there is a whole lot of margin for error..
What about all those zombie machines scouring google for topic.php? or phpnuke's latest exploit? Do those get counted for WindowsOS or what? If so, that'd greatly inflate the perceived relative percentage of machines running that(those) OS's. The fact is that just about all zombie traffic and other automated hits on sites come from non-Mac OS's. Anyone who runs a ssh server on the internet has seen their server hit (probably daily) with with dictionary attacks from machines trying to gain access. I bet a *VERY* small percentage of the machines trying to get into my servers via ssh are running MacOS...Does that mean that there aren't any Macs out there at all?
Wow, I have seen a lot of bullshit posted, but this takes the cake.
So what will it prove if I find a similar exploit for OSX? And just what kind of statment is "HALO 3 LEAKED SCREENSHOTS!!!!! HOT HOT HOT"?
Like mac users are not stupid about security either, there was a story awhile back about the dreaded "rm -f" "virus" that plagued an "innocent" person who was "participating" in the "public MS office beta test" that they got from p2p.
Do some research. Sophos admitted the the Cowhand/A is another 'proof of concept' virus that has been around for at least a year.
Good luck finding a single incident of 'AplS/Fromr-A' actually infecting anything or even existing and MP3Virus.Gen is a well-known proof of concept that also has not spread in the wild and does not cause any damage.
Some day there will be a bona fide, bad virus for Mac OS X that actually spreads in the wild and causes damage. That day has not yet arrived.
How is this Offtopic?? I merely replied to strengthen my point. I know that there are mods on crack, but these days it must be bad crack.
Running WinXP Pro SP2 fully patched and Firefox, brought my system to its knees, but didn't actually bluescreen / crash. Managed to recover Windows eventually by bringing up the task manager and killing firefox. Not sure what exactly it was doing though as Task Manger didn't register much cpu activity.
If we assume that every single Mac sold ever was still in service as of 2005/1/1 (51.044 million) . . .
.
And that the number of all other personal computers in the installed base on 2005/1/1 equaled only the number of IBM clones sold in 2003-2004 alone (320.795 million, for a combined Mac+Others installed base of 371.839 million) . .
Then the Mac had an installed base of 13.7% (51.044/371.839) of personal computers as of January 1, 2005.
(Sales figures provided )
There is no non-ludicrous way to reach a figure of 16% for the Mac installed base. The numbers just don't work.
Didn't crash mine.
Dell Inspiron Laptop running Win XP home and IE.
Patched and up to date.
This article implies that Linux, BSD, and so on all have a 0% marketshare. I think the person creating this statisitic was confused, and thought only Windows and Mac OS X exists, and so in the data that only 84% of the people were running Windows so assumed everyone else is running on a Mac. Even then, 16% for the combined marketshare is more then I believe, I'm currently believing the W3School's 6.2% as the combined marketshare of Linux and Macs... I also believe there 25% Firefox statistic too, even though I'm sure most people here will flame me for that.
I believe that statisitic because as I meet people, around 20% of them already use Firefox, and around 95% use Firefox afterwards... I also know many people who just recommend it after I told them about it and they love it, even those people who literally know nothing about a computer, heck, the person who probably has switched more then me can't even spell computers. He's this really, really cool frat kid, he's grown to hate IE because of the spyware and popups and viruses and crap, doesn't know what "IE" is though if you say it to him, but he knows its not Firefox, and tells everyone to use Firefox.
In my experience, ONLY getting three years out of a Mac IS extraordinary. I typically see three years as the minimum length of service for a Mac, typical is more like 5 years.
I 100% agree. My wife's been using a blue and white G3 from 1998, upgraded with a few new pieces. It just became our new Linux server last night since we both have laptops now. :)
I've got a 7300/200 sitting on the shelf next to it which does scanning and has a Wacom tablet hooked to it, running OS 9. That machine is probably from around '95. And it still feels plenty fast and does everything most people would want from a computer. Just amazing.
On the other hand, sitting next to that is a dual Celeron 500 running Linux which has been our server for years. Problem is, most people don't want to use anything but Windows on a PC, which effectively end-of-lifes them faster than they'd normally be.
Cryptic Allusion - New Mac and Dreamcast Games!
Not that it matters, me being a single data point and all, but the number of OS/2 users these days is certainly non-zero.
Mainframe/UNIX Bit Twiddler and long time Windows/Linux Hobbyist.
The Theorem Theorem: If If, Then Then.
Not so fast. A well-hollowed out greyhound or St. Bernard puppy should be large enough to hold a kazoo and enough of your face to play it. Be sure to treat the inner walls of the young dog with a disinfectant and then an acrylic spray. Less stench and disease. And your Souza songs will resonate better. You're welcome.
dude, I don't think your site's stats are very reliable when 0.12% of your users are still running "Windows 1"!
cpeterso
Funny how linux on apple hardware irks the mac metrosexuals.
When pressed for what makes macs so great, 'it's the hardware, the pcc chip' - when it's suggested you can run alternative OSs (some with their own advantages over osx (price, configurability, in many cases performance) they're 'oh, that's absurd... why put anything on a mac other than mac osx...'
Christ, when can i buy a cheap non-mac ppc board? I like the architecture, but can't bear to pay the "OSX TAX". Will the apple store sell me one minus OS, minus apple badging?
Regardless of marketing, tens of thousands of companies manufacture personal computers. "As Seen on TV", a Slashdot user claiming to work for Apple, has used the statistic "the fourth biggest computer manufacturer in the world", and that doesn't sound unlikely at all, regardless of metric.
Of course, the later is also the type of person inclined to do as much with a computer as possible.
To be honest, I know very few people that would be considered "artisitcally inclined", so I can't really make any statement about this segment of the population without losing complete credibility. Then again, I never claimed to have credibility in the first place.
One thing though, when you say that "most PCs sit around in offices", do you mean both home and work offices or just the later? The reason I ask this is that from my observations, people who work in an office with a computer typically have a computer at home. Meaning that there would be roughly %100-%50 minus some percentage of people that wouldn't use a computer at home. The %50 comes from the people that would be living with a SO and have no need for 2 computers (and the range makes up for those that would have 2 anyway).
This is all assuming that most people buy PCs. But it really doesn't matter that much, because most people will use the "office"-like applications despite the OS they use.
Onto the topic at hand, my leading theory of why mac users spend more on software is 2-fold.
1. From my limited understanding, Macs don't appear to have the same "pirate culture" that windows has. Futhermore, with a seemingly isolated user-base, there is probably less occurances of a friend saying "Oh you need that software, I've got a burnt copy at home." That is prevalent in the windows world.
2. This is potientially an unfair generalization but, I would say mac purchasers are willing to spend more (up front at the very least) on their computer. While CS students are guilty of this in general, the other side of the coin probably has more money (unfair, I know), I mean, it's hard to convince the average person to go out and spend extra money (initially) on a computer when they don't have much to spend (I'm writing about a pre-Mini world here, which as far as an install base goes, we currently live in, so to speak). Therefore, if the average mac user has more money, they will be less inclined to go out of their way to pirate software.
So in general, I would say that the whole "pirating culture" is less prevalent.
I think the whole "macs lasting longer" argument is going to become less of an issue soon enough. Why? Because I've noticed a trend in the windows world over the last 10 years where as time progresses the requirements for windows become less of an issue. In other words, hardware speed and capacity are increasing faster than software requirements. Meaning that at some point in the future, the average user, who only wants the basics, will easily be able to hold onto their computers much longer. Although the other side of the coin may be that the average mac user may be able to hold onto their hardware longer because Mac OSes don't seem to be as resource demanding. At least, that's my experience with Panther on my Clamshell iBook SE with 366Mhz, 128MB RAM, etc.
All and all, longevity isn't the concern of the average user at the moment. Security is. And the security issue will have to be resolved before that can be an issue. (my first instinct was to say that compatibility is, but in reality, people just want their machines to perform a specific functions, and typically OSX and windows are about equal from the average person's point of view in this respect, at least in my experience).
Am I open minded towards open source, or closed minded towards closed source?
I don't see why that should be so surprising. I use a Windows XP or Debian box at work. I do lots of google searches related to my job. Constantly need to look up error messages which I have never seen, and things like that.
That is a great point. Googles numbers are most likley heavily influenced by what people use at work, since they spend more time on computers there and as you say are probably doing a lot more searching. I do a ton of searches from work and some at home on my Mac, but it's probably only a small percentage of the PC searching I do. So even though I'm a Mac user I'm heavily skewing Googles results in favor if the PC.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
2) People who use Macs don't get many viruses.
Please note that while the Mac is not immune, that should read "do not get ANY viruses". That is the truth of things today. it may change tomorrow but it's not changed yet.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Why aren't there 16% Safari/OSX.*Mozilla users on the web? These numbers are very much made up...
Name the stats you are thinking of and we'll be happy to point out the flaw in your thinking.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Yes is is possible to write trojans for the Mac.
But the ones you listed are all demos if you will, not things that are in the wild. Perhaps someday, but not yet.
So you have three trojans that people wrote to see if it could be done, vs 10k activley working viruses for the PC many of which are constantly scanning the net for victims instead of hoping someone will download and install them. I know which side of that equation I prefer.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Someone floated the idea that less mac users connect to the Internet - well nothing could be further from the truth. Those machines are geared up for connectivity. I don't know anyone with a Mac who wouldn't use it to connect to the Internet, and why wouldn't you?
Which makes me wonder, perhaps most of those 16% are Linux-based servers? Do they count?
Most PC people I know are more interested in buying a $600 video card for their 5 year old PC.
In other words, most of the people you know are gibbering morons? What good is a $600 video card going to do in such an ancient PC? Would the AGP bus even support anything that advanced? Quite unlikley. Your story is just not adding up.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I and most mac users I know use firefox. It may be the we are in the minority because we come from a linux background but still, not everyone who uses a mac uses safari.
evil is as evil does
Yes the old OS had many viruses, I remember the extreme fun of bootsector viruses permiating the labs.
However, currently OS X still has NO viruses or trojans in the wild. There were a few concepts people did to show it could be done (which it can) but still there is nothing yet. And one the ball is rolling it will be mostly trojans and not really viruses as we know them from the PC world, since there are no default open services to infect through.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
What's more significant is that, even at the low end, it's a higher percentage than Mac has enjoyed historically. Good for them. They're turning out some good products and expanding their market share.
But I'll bet the real issue with most of the converts is security. With Windoze you pay for the OS, then pay for an antivirus subscription, pay for a spyware removal program...the active word in all those is "pay." So, yeah, Mac's may cost a little more on the front end but when you add on all those subscription extras for Windoze it evens out.
Windows is fine if you don't surf the internet with it. I surf with Linux and work on a Windows box on the segment not connected to the internet and it's fine. Otherwise get a Mac. My friends with the new minis just rave about them.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
That statement is bogus because the assumption that each person throws his old PC away instead of continuing to use it or pass it on to someone else to use is erroneous. A recent study I read about on news.com showed that most computer owners hold on to their old machines even when they buy new ones.
A virus or a worm is a piece of malware containing a delivery mechanism, a propogation mechanism, and a payload.
Cowhand is a possible payload. It has no delivery or propogation mechanism.
Apis us a possible payload. It has no delivery or propogation mechanism.
MP3virus is a test for a possible delivery mechanism. It didn't work without unusual user intervention, and Apple has changed the behaviour of Safari to make it less likely to trigger. It has no payload or propogation mechanism.
There are no viruses for OS X in the wild.
Mac users use their computers to work.
Windows users use their computers for entertainment (c'mon, honestly - how many games run on Macs? How many porn sites work for Macs?)
I would expect Windows users to use the web much more, as they're searching for the new Comet Cursors or KaZaa release, or trying to find the next big thing in joke movies, PowerPoint presentations, etc. People on Macs might use the web to find out about the latest plugins for Photoshop, or tutorials on Objective C.
Though this doesn't explain an 8-times differenential between Mac and PC users' behaviour. 16% is a huge number - far too big for me to believe.
You know what's going to happen now?
A whole bunch of zombie empire builders are going to realise that there is one platform that will allow them to expand their zombie base by 16%. Soon we'll have active trojans, worms and viruses looking to infest every Mac they can get their hands on.
I'm going to miss the good old days, when we could safely say, "Mac OS X is immune to all viruses"!
It may sound bad, but like there are bad areas of one city, where the general population earns a lot less then those other areas of the city and crime rate is high.
Could Apple be filtering who exactly get access to their machines because of the higher price on hardware? I guess the flaw in this argument is that a "bad" computer user may not be neccessarily poor, infact they could be quite rich.
Interesting
Giving IE users a taste of their own medicine since 2005 - http://pods.-is-a-geek.net/
Mac user-base will be shown at 12% . Good call, Apple. You've been fucking up since about 1986, so why change the established operating plan?
Shit. You might as well start coding for Itanium 2's.
Quite alright, I just wanted to be clearer.
now for some heat induced musings...
--curiously, when I first got my pismo, my office machine was a dual 733 xeon box, NT4, Wildcat video card, all the fun stuff of the day. I used to do finish work in AfterEffects, and for curiosity's sake, occasionally i would run renders of identical scenes on both. the pismo (g3 400) kept pace. this is the kind of thing that let's me ignore chipspeed arguments. you work with what you got, write to be elegant, and eventually there will be enough computer to do it fast enough.
I guess I'm "old school" enough to not mind a certain amount of 'offline' time in my graphics work. you just have to time it right so that the filter/action/render takes just slightly less time than the other thing that you have to do. that way you don't spend anytime just sitting there looking at progress bars.
needless to say this seems to be an unusual opinion...;)
anyway, I too am on the verge of an AlBook, have to hurry so I can still get the education/staff discount!
ooh boy the humidity is killing me
-- it's ridiculous how many people misspell ridiculous... (damn, damn, damn...)
god I am totally incoherent this afternoon, sorry...
-- it's ridiculous how many people misspell ridiculous... (damn, damn, damn...)
I agree with the sentiment but shouldn't that be 67% and 33%? Three computers were sold.
When will Apple understand that they will have a BIG market opportunity if they create a x86 version of MacOS X... The market is virgin, considering that Microsoft dominate it with more than 95%. If they create a x86 version of MacOS X (for PCs) I'll be one of many that will switch my OS.
Hope to see this someday.
No problems here... using Firefox on Linux.
Meh.
If the Switch to Intel news is true, I would expect Mac sales to slow and this wouldn't be good news for the bottom line and of couse the APPL stock. I know I wouldn't want to purchase a new Mac if I knew the processors were going to change. Besides, what are the developers to do? Are they going to want to go through this?
... how will Apple support OS X on the PowerPC for existing systems/customers and OS X on Intel for new systems/customers? I would think that Apple would need to ramp up on numerous levels ... developers, management, support, sales, etc ... That isn't going to be cheap.
Another point
Switch To A Mac
http://switchtoamac.blogspot.com/
Apple made Dumb Security Mistake #1 here: they put in an implicit autoinstaller for downloaded programs. Just like Microsoft did with Active-X.
If you're going to have auto-install, the installed software must run in a jail. Java appplets are one approach. BSD jails are another. LOMAC and NSA Secure Linux offer a third. This problem can be solved. Apple blew it.
The main reason there aren't more MacOS viruses seems to be lack of market share, not lack of opportunity.
The first one relies on a MacOS X hole that allows any unprivileged program to specify that a program should be run at startup.
This is not a hole, any more than "cron" or "at" or for that matter ".login" or ".profile" are holes.
Are you saying that Intel chips are succeptible to viruses? Or are you saying that computers which have an Intel CPU need to be replaced more frequently? Neither of those are the case, so I don't understand where the shame comes in...
This is why OSX is virus free.
You are harboring a common misconception that it's merely "Security by Obscurity" which is far from the truth.
What's past is NOT ALWAYS prologue for the future!
MSBlaster was actually a worm. It infected the system without the knowledge or assistance of an end user. The inherent vulnerability of the Windows platform to countless buffer overflow exploits enabled the massive large scale malware outbreaks that people think of by name - Code Red, MS Blaster, SQL Slammer, etc.
There exist however, countless email borne viruses, and for any one of them your point remains valid. A particularly clever email virus can trick an end user into clicking, "Yes", to the question, "Would you like your computer to be 0wn3d?" regardless of platform.
If you mod me down, I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine.
I use Safari and Firefox on my macs, but my bank requires me to use IE or Netscape to access their site. So, I set Safari's user agent to IE and everything works. Older versions of Netscape for mac (still widely used on older machines) also had the option to modify the user agent. I help out a few senior citizens with netscape on older macs and all their browsers are set to report as IE.
"When you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to reform." - Mark Twain
I'm a bit late here, so I'm sure nobody will read this. Nonetheless, I have to add this since I can't believe nobody (maybe I missed something) has pointed out that installed base percentages don't need to sum to 100% over the entire spectrum of machine types. In other words, you can't conclude ANYTHING about the relative installed base between Windows and Mac, even if it were absolutely true that the Mac's were 16%. Windows could still be 100% theoretically. For example, I contribute to both installed bases since I own both machine types.
A more reasonable measure is still market share, I think, despite the article's breathless claims otherwise. The purchase of a machine probably corresponds highly to actual usage. And the browser share figures seem to support this notion, as they seem to coincide very closely with market share.
When polled, a further 16% of computer users said "l337" while about 67% just grunted. 1% mumbled something about millennium shrimps. This gives us the following statistics:
- 16% mac users
- 16% linux users
- 67% win users
- 1% BeOS
I think, therefore I am...I think.
I know for a fact that the analysis is faulty.
...and they used to publish operating system stats before the results scared the hell out of them and they stopped publishing it.
How?
Well, google has this little thing called Zeitgeist.
Macs never broke the 10% mark. EVER. Of course that will change if Jobs has the balls to bring OS X to legacy/commodity Intel platforms, but we all know Jobs *DOESN'T* have the balls to do that. So, Macs above 15%? That's never going to happen.
I trust large numbers (the larger the better) more than I'd ever trust sombody's slanted, paid-for-in-full "research"... and before you point out that google removed the numbers because they were "faulty", I can actually point to the post at Dan Gillmore's journal that resulted in the numbers being pulled down.
Have a nice propaganda free day.
Google Zeitgeist says that 3% of google access if from mac users. Maybe mac users are so smart that they don't need to search the web...
I work in computer support for a school system I know the vast majority of our computer usage is for running stand-alone educational software or for hitting our intranet web site. Very little computer time in schools -- which is a major portion of the Mac install base -- is spent surfing the internet.
Did you know that 16% of all Statistics are incorrect?
Who's leg do I have to hump to get a dry martini around here?
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
The share should increase significantly when Mac OS X Leopard comes out. Just wanted to be the first to say Leopard on Slashdot.
Get some spyware installed, and your Wintel box will be hitting so much!