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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.)"
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!
The number only seems high because for years the word market-share has been mistakenly used to describe installed base instead of percentage of sales each quarter.
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Didn't do SHIT to my computer. YOU FAIL IT.
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
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.
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
Over the long term however, the upgrade *rates* of 2 vs 1 purchaces every 3 years do imply a 66.7% and 33.3% market split.
X86/Win32 -- 73%
X86/Linux -- 11%
PowerPC/Mac OS X -- 11%
The remaining 5% is divided among dozens of other combinations.p ?project_id=8&view=tco
http://stats.distributed.net/misc/platformlist.ph
I have to note that the PowerPC client for distributed.net is very good, a single 1.2 GHz G4 performs on par with a dual 2.4 GHz P4. So, these statistics suggest that ~5.5% of the CPUs is running Mac OS X.
extern warranty;
main()
{
(void)warranty;
}
Software Publishers Association (SPA) estimates that 16 percent of computer users are on Macs. ...
Windows wins, Linux comes distant second and Mac is a curiosity. Sorry to bring you down to earth folks
Maybe in the USA and possibly UK. I live in Poland and I don't know a person using a Mac. According to this site Mac users constitute a 0.3% minority among Internet users. Linux is 0.9% and Windows - 98.5%. I suppose it is similar in Eastern Europe, Russia, India, China, Brazil, Chile, Malaysia,
(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 i had to guess, it would be that the parent is from the US, and the grandparent is from Australia or the UK. in those countries, the "6 monthly" formulation is the norm for every six months. having been a visiting physician in papua new guinea (ex-australian protectorate) i had to get used to a medication dosage schedule of "6 hourly" meaning once every six hours and not six every hour.
just FYI
Fermat's other theorem: "I have a simple proof, but I can't write it down as I fear it's a DMCA violation to discuss it"
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.
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.
Yes. Your first statement should be:
- The vast majority of studies estimate the marketshare of the macintosh at somewhere around three to five percent.
- One study estimates it (installed base) at sixteen percent.
There is a difference between installed base and marketshare.
If a PC user buy a new PC every other year and a Mac user buy a Mac every four years, you would see that the PC has 60% marketshare, but the installed base is still really only 50%.
Given that Mac users have claimed, for a while, about how long they last (a combination of higher price and higher satisfaction, I'm sure, in that they can't afford to buy a new Mac every other year, and that when they bought it in the first place it met their needs to the point that they didn't need to buy or upgrade a couple years later because it was slow or unsatisfying or virus infected), it wouldn't surprise me if Mac users replaced their Macs every 8 years while PC users have traditionally replaced their PCs every 3.
GPL Deconstructed
Don't you mean "semi-annual"?
Just another proletarian malcontent.
I think the news is that since a lot of hay is made over the 3% number. People tend to regard it as a foolhardy move to try and create software for only 3% of the market.
If in fact apple has 16% of the install-base, there is a much greater reason for commercial developers to spend the time and resources to port or start their work with the apple platform in mind.
Since one of the major complaints about Macs by people that don't have them (along with "one-button-mouse," "lack-of-expandability," etc. etc) is that there isn't enough software available for the mac, because no one is going to port this big package if only 3% of all users is likely to ever buy this. and a small fraction of that 3% to boot. 16% though, that's double digits that is, not to mention more than 5 times the normally perceived level of usage.
I'm a mac user too, but I haven't bought a new one for 5 years. so I'm contributing to the base, but not the market. the side effect of selling computers that don't allow for a lot of expansion, is that you tend to get bought by people who don't require it.
-- it's ridiculous how many people misspell ridiculous... (damn, damn, damn...)
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).
The number only seems high because for years the word market-share has been mistakenly used to describe installed base instead of percentage of sales each quarter.
Well, I'm more than a little skeptical of these numbers, because by nature they're talking about Macs connected to the internet, and these numbers do not jibe at all with any results we've ever seen from web use in general.
I'm responsible for tracking web use at my company (a division of the largest media company in the world, but I'll keep it anonymous beyond that), and we get significantly under 10% of our unique visits from Macs - and we're a creative company.
I can't post those numbers but I will post the platform numbers from my own web site, linked in my sig. A lot of these visits come from Slashdot, which is itself pretty Mac-heavy:
34165 Windows XP
3482 Windows 2000
2435 Mac Power PC
1221 Linux
1192 Windows 98
541 Windows ME
208 Windows NT
44 Windows 95
31 FreeBSD
6 Sun
1 WebTV
631 Unknown
If you don't believe my numbers, plenty of more reputable services track web usage as well (Google used to, W3Schools still does). All of these numbers more or less agree and none of them are even close to 16%. And these are tracking real usage, not market share.
So, if 16% of all computer users use Macs, and by definition (based on the test in the parent article) all of those Macs are connected to the internet, then doesn't it seem a bit odd that so few of those Macs are actually used on the internet? That such a large percentage of people buy them and then just let them sit there?
I realize a computer may be on the internet but be used for something like video editing, but that wouldn't account for such a large percentage, especially when the same is true for PC's.
No sir, I believe the numbers I've recorded myself... not such obviously inflated numbers that came from who knows where.
How do these so-called "viruses" spread themselves the way a Windows virus does? And if you'll notice, all of these require the user to activate them explicitly unlike most Windows viruses which can do that on their own while using your machine to spread themselves around to others.
Writing a script to wipe out all the files in your user directory is NOT a virus. In fact, OS X requires admin authentication for an application or script to do anything outside the bounds of a user's home directory--unlike Windows.
Don't know why I'm bothering. You're probably one of those anti-Mac zealots who wants to believe the rampant viruses on Windows is perfectly normal and refuse to hear anything that Lord Gates doesn't hand down to you from on high.
--Rick "If it isn't broken, take it apart and find out why."
Straight from Dictionary.com:
cachet n.
1. A mark or quality, as of distinction, individuality, or authenticity: "Federal courts have a certain cachet which state courts lack" (Christian Science Monitor).
2. A seal on a document, such as a letter.
[French, from Old French, from cacher, to press. See cache.]
Enlightening, innit?
Actually, this is a RTFA issue - the
In this quoted press release Wizzard Software then explains that the Software Publishers Association (SPA) estimates 16% of computer users use macs. That probably has a lot to do with software sales, and obviously with Windows piracy rates enormously high the figure is highly skewed towards any other platform that actually sells software - i.e. the Mac.
The MacDaily article then goes on to talk about a completely unrelated piece of news:
Where Win Schwartau makes the point that there are no viruses or spyware for the Mac, which he thinks is great.
These two items are unrelated; however, the guys at MacDaily linked the two in the headline: "16-percent of computer users are unaffected by viruses, malware because they use Apple Macs" - which obviously suggested a causal link to the weird Mac propagandist who posted the story to
Try using a non-IE browser that identifies itself as non-IE (and doesn't include MSIE in it's useragent string) on the Hoyt's movie sites here in Australia. Or the old St George internet banking site.
Lots of sites use the useragent string to "identify" the browser. Then they serve up a, "your kind not welcome here" message if you're not MSIE-useragent-compliant or at least Mozilla-useragent-compliant. There's a reason that OmniWeb reports itself as "Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh;
U; PPC Mac OS X; en-US) AppleWebKit/125.4 (KHTML, like Gecko, Safari) OmniWeb/v5
63.42" and Safari reports itself as "Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; PPC Mac OS X; en) AppleWebKit/412 (KHTML, like Gecko) Safari/412"
It's not that the sites are coded explicitly for Internet Explorer - the sites work (mostly) on other browsers, but the people who wrote the site were only willing to test on the most common browser, and therefore reject other browsers. Now the sites are doing two-browser checking, but they're still checking based on UserAgent, not JavaScript capabilities, which means that when the next version of the browser comes out the site will again be inaccessible.