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Noise Over Mac OS Market Share "Slip"
OakDragon writes, "Mac OS market share actually slipped since last September. This reverses a trend in the winter and spring months that showed some slight growth. The actual percentage loss is small: 0.02%. But it may be significant since it follows a solid growth trend. It must be disappointing to Apple and Mac fans to see what is basically a flat line in desktop market share." Mac-oriented sites are pointing out the unreliability of the metrics from Net Applications, which are based on users of the HitsLink service.
Initiation FTW GNAA Foreva
I'd have to say that from my limited sampling, these numbers are very possibly off and a .2% downward change is likely statistically insignificant, especially given their sampling methods.
....really old design from the early 90's, but it's been low on my priority list for the last four years) was likely the first online textbook receiving much more international traffic (about 1000 unique visitors/day from all over the world) and I have seen the international Macintosh marketshare increase from about 4% to 6.5% of total traffic over the past year.
Traffic from my blog primarily from the US shows about 19% of traffic is from the Macintosh (200-900 unique visitors/day). Of all the traffic that hit my blog from the recent Boing Boing posting, it appears that of those that clicked through, over 23% of the clicks were from Macintosh systems and from the traffic I get from Slashdot, about 15% is from Macintosh systems. This limited sampling shows a steady increase in the percentage of Macintosh users that have visited over the past few years.
Traffic from another site I manage, Webvision (I know, I know,
Both of these statistics mirror the trends I have seen reported for the platforms marketshare on much wider scales. These are direct measures that I am reporting as opposed to a fee based service like HitsLink whose measures are not as direct. Too bad Google's Zeitgeist no longer reports on platform statistics which were a good measure of overall platform usage from a much wider used resource.
Visit Jonesblog and say hello.
Forgive! It was the Eye Candy what made me do it!
- Minutus cantorum, minutus balorum, minutus carborata descendum pantorum.
Who's going to buy a brand new Macintosh when we are just about to go to Rev. B. chips/platforms? Maybe everyone who is not 1-point-oh-averse has already bought a Mac. And everyone else wants x86 2.0.
INTO YOUR ASS!!!
INTO YOUR ASS!!!
INTO YOUR ASS!!!
INTO YOUR ASS!!!
I was still in High School, I had a big cock and was horny all the time, jerked off at least 3 times a day. My body is small and slim with very little hair, 5"4",125lbs. My fat cut 7" cock looked huge on me. I had been jerking off thinking about gay sex lately, I was very turned on by the fantasy of having sex with an older man, and having a cock in my ass.
I got a job working after school and weekends at a antique shop, it was ran by 2 older gay gentleman, very nice gentleman who were always flirting and teasing me. An older very distinguished looking handsome customer came in the store, he was a silver haired fox who looked like he had money.
The owners knew him well, he bought a small end table and asked the owners if I could help him unload it at his house, I thought this was kind of suspicous since it didn't weigh much but my horniness and curiousity made me jump at the chance. We rode in his SUV to a big house in a ritzy neighborhood and I carried the end table into his house. He gave me a tour, it was huge and very nice, there was an indoor hot tub and he asked me if I wanted to soak for a while, I told him I didn't have a swim suit and he laughed and told me I could go without, he always did.
I was getting turned on so I started to undress, my tank top came off first and my back was turned to him and I pulled down my cutoffs, no underwear and bent over to finish removing my cutoffs, it was a turn on to expose my ass to him, he watched me climb into the hot tub, my cock was rock hard. I watched him take off his shirt, he had a sexy chest covered with silver hair, he pulled down his pants and underwear in one motion exposing a beautiful 8" cut cock, very fat. We sat in the tub for five minutes talking, he asked me if I wanted a massage, I moved over close to him with my back to him and sort of sat on his lap, I could feel that big cock, I started moving my ass around until it was between my cheeks, I moved up and down, it felt so hot, made my asshole spasm. He was rubbing my shoulders and back, he reached around and started massaging my inner thighs making my cock twitch, finally he started stroking my cock, I was so turned on it was all I could do not to cum. He had me stand up and started tonguing my ass while stroking my cock, I was in pleasure overload and exploded cum after about two minutes of this.
We went into his bedroom, still naked and dried off, he put his hands on my shoulders and gently pushed me to my knees, grabbed the back of my head and guided me to his cock. I sucked on it hungrily feeling it get harder in my mouth, when he was rock hard he guided me to the bed and had me lay on my stomach. He ate my ass again this time harder, getting his tongue up inside me, this made my cock hard again, I relaxed and felt my boypussie open up. Next he slowly inserted one of his fingers , it kind of hurt at first but then I started to love the feeling. Two fingers was next with some lube, he two finger fucked me for along time, I loved how it felt, like I was getting stretched. I was moaning and moving my ass up and down.
He stopped and put his big cock back in my mouth, I sucked him for maybe a minute and he pulled out and rolled on a condom, had me get down doggie style got behind me and pushed that big cock head against my tight hole. He slowly pushed, I thought it was to big and would never fit, all of a sudden it popped in, the sensation took my breath away, it felt so huge and it hurt a little, but I was starting to relax and it was feeling better by the second.
He slowly pushed in until he was deep inside me and moved in and out very slowly to start with, it still burned but the thought of getting fucked, having a big cock inside me was such a turn on.
He fucked me for a long time, after I got used to it and fully relaxed the feeling was pure pleasure. My cock was rock hard.
The pace got faster and harder, finally I came again, without even touching my cock, such intense pleasure. He came and stayed inside me, I layed flat on my stomch with him still inside me, he slowly went limp, slipped out of me and rolled off me.
heads on! apply directly to the forehead!
HOHHHHHHHHH-M0HHHHHHHHH-SEXUALS! Every one of them. Of course, they only number about two hundred, total.
Between this, the gentoo article, and the global warming article, I'm seeing some local warming right here.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
Film at 11.
What if I do the same thing, and I do get different results?
Of course these numbers and not at all scientfic. The change is also completely insignificant. I agree on all of that. However, I have a feeling many who will denounce these statistics would be singing thier praises if they showed a significant gain ;-)
"reality has a well-known liberal bias" - Steven Colbert
You need to buy at least five or six PC's before you get one that works decently. The Mac always works the first time. :)
On a more serious note, what's the Linux vs Windows market share these days?
Diplomacy is the art of letting other people have your way.
Mac marketshare is always between 3-5%. They're saying on the high side of that 3-5% so that's just peachy. Why is everyone so concerned about marketshare for the Mac when all the hardware is all basically commodity, and most of the really good Mac software comes from Apple anyway?
Mac owns 90% Market Share
Once Steve "I have a big ego" Jobs switched the Macintosh from the PowerPC to the Intel processor, the Macintosh lost its mystique. Using some simple patches/tools, you can run Windows XP on the Mac. With a little effort, you can run the x86 MacOS on a Dell PC or an HP PC.
Since the Mac is now essentially a PC clone, why would you pay a premium for Mac hardware?
http://useragentswitcher.mozdev.org/
:-D
set to os x
Go dig into the numbers a bit. I'm not a Mac fanboi (see my abuse of one earlier today) but this is a non-story. The site in question is tracking Mac OS and MacIntel seperate, so of course Mac OS is dropping. Add the two together and you get a different picture. They appear not to have fixed the scripts that generate the cute graphs though, because up to now they broke out each OS variation so they could see the migration patterns in Windows versions.
Democrat delenda est
"According to Techweb, data gathered by Net Applications shows that the Mac OS had 4.35 per cent of the world's operating system share last December. Now it only has 4.33 per cent.""
Yet, at the link to the actual data, it says, for August 2006:
winXP: 84.18%, win2000: 6.54%, Mac: 3.71%, win98: 2.40%, winME: 1.10%, Other: 2.07%
So, 3.71%, not 4.33%. Looks like The Inquirer is reading the line for April 2006, and not September 2006. Actually, Mac share drops continually during the period December 2005 (4.35%) to August 2006 (3.71%). This is more than half a percentage point... which you can trust as much as you can trust their methodology, I guess.
Btw, "Other" rises from 1.33% to over 2% during the same period. That's us Linux people, right?
Mac-oriented sites are pointing out the unreliability of the metrics from Net Applications, which are based on users of the HitsLink service.
Yet if it proved the opposite they wouldn't question its reliability at all, and would bring it up every chance they get.
My custom Core 2 Duo desktop cost me $922 (CDN with tax + shipping), the cheapest similar thing [I didn't buy a keyboard/mouse with this] is the mac mini which cost $899 for the 1.83 Core Duo [not Core 2 Duo, e.g. conroe] version. Factor in taxes and the Mac Mini is $1024 in Ontario (6% GST and 8% PST). So for $100 less I got a better case [Antec 380W Tower], better processor [Core 2 Duo vs. Core Duo], and 512MB more memory.
OMG!!! COULD THAT BE WHY Apple is losing sales? I just don't know!!!
Tom
Someday, I'll have a real sig.
"Mac OS market share actually slipped since last September."
The statistic is affected by the $200 PC computers and $500 laptop PCs that are being sold.
Does this mean that Apple is beleaguered again?
Warning: The intelligence of this post may be larger than it appears.
I blame those idiotic commercials with the "nerdy" pc guy and the "hip" mac guy. They cater to the lowest common demoninator of consumer, and convey no real selling points for the mac. To me they seem condescending and blatently inflammatory.
If you want to sell your product apple, sell it on its own merits. "OMG The alternative is the SUXORZ!!" is not a good advertising methodology.
Quite frankly I don't want to see OS X have some huge marketshare. I'd prefer the platform to have enough marketshare that developers can make money and Apple to make a profit, but not big enough for Virus writers and spyware authors to care (the way it is now).
Why does OS X have to have an increasing marketshare to remain successful?
Talking about using CP/M is funny, but, since few Slashdot readers know what CP/M is, they won't understand the joke.
CP/M is Control Program for Microcomputers, an OS used with 8088 microprocessors back before IBM thought of selling PCs. It was a dog of an OS, mostly because it was unfinished. Back then CP/M was sold by a company that thought printing the original of manuals on a dot-matrix printer with an old ribbon was acceptable practice.
The Morrow Microdecision came with a Command Line Interface language called Pilot that was in many ways better than the CLI that comes with Windows XP. I suppose Microsoft's plan is never to supply a finished OS so people will always want new versions.
--
Bush lied, the U.S. government killed thousands. Impeach.
Bloody hell! It's back to beleaguered then.
spoonerize "magic trackpad"
And 3uilding 1s
This is pretty absurd. The market for 10.4 Tiger is pretty much done, because anyone who wanted to upgrade to to Tiger did so last year.
Anyone buying a Mac in the last year and a half got Tiger for 'free.' So who is left to buy a Tiger upgrade? If they waited this long, why buy it now rather than waiting for Leopard in a few months?
Statistics are worthless if they are presented by idiots who don't even know what the numbers mean.
----
www.roughlydrafted.com
Free MacOS from its dependance on Apple hardware.
People say that Apple relies on its profits from hardware more than software, and breaking the tie will cause Apple's hardware business to suffer. But I don't think that is true. Here is why:
1. Apple zealots still buy Apple hardware because it is "higher quality" and "more stabler" etc. No net loss/gain here.
2. People unwilling to buy Apple hardware, but willing to run MacOS will pay Apple whatever they charge for OSX ($199?) and run it on their PC. They will also (likely) purchase other Apple apps for the OS. Net gain here of both userbase (and everything that comes with that, including commercial app support) and profit.
3. Windows lovers will continue to buy PC parts. No net loss/gain here.
4. People who only purchased Apple hardware to run MacOS will buy PC parts and run MacOS on it. Net loss on hardware only here.
In the end I think there are far more people in group 2 than there are in group 4, and the benefits of the increased userbase will far outweigh any loss on hardware they may incur.
Whats stopping them? An outdated ideology that relegates their products to a niche market (save the iPod, and we all know what a failure that was).
Let me get this straight...
Apple's overpriced, but pretty, x86 OEM boxes are remaining a niche product in the computing world at large???
SHOCK!!!
The writing has been on the wall for Mac hardware ever since IBM dumped Apple as a customer a couple years ago.
Apple will flounder around in the x86 OEM business(you are here) -> then go software only(ala Be) -> and finally sell off the Mac/OS X stuff to concentrate on the lucrative and growing digital content market
What is the fascination with market share?
What's the thinking here? More market share must mean more sales and therefore more profit? Apple seems to be making plenty of money, so what does more market share gives you, or is it just a measure of how many customers you did not get?
IMHO, the problem is you can not make a product that will please everyone. Apple has decided to make a certain kind of product - looks cool, well designed, easy to use and at a premium price.
I guess it depends on how you classify your market. If you are talking portable mp3 players in the USA, then Apple has around 80% of the market (their figures).
If you mean "laptop computers" then the field is wide open to every man and his dog that can bolt a machine together - including the el cheapo models who compete on price alone. This is akin to putting Mercedes, Audi and Lexus in the "car market" and wondering why their share is so low (hint: you are including Hyundai and others). This is not the same market. Who are the premium computer manufacturers? IBM might be there, Dell isn't.
As long as Apple continues to focus on making their products this way they will have a following and will generate profits - to hell with market share.
I don't make predictions, and I never will.
The article doesn't even get iPod sales correct. It gets the peak month wrong, and it's off by several millions. How can we accurately discuss the results if it doesn't even get public iPod number correct?
"Sufferin' succotash."
Let's see: 1. Macs are pricier (oh, but they are "cuter"!) 2. There are far fewer software titles available (especially games) 3. To me, Macs offer a much lower utility. For #3 here's an example. I am a PC tech and was disgusted the other day when I couldn't even copy and paste (or drag and drop) a folder from a user's Mac hard drive to a Safari/Firefox-loaded FTP site. It prompted for username & password like it should, I authenticated, and the Mac browser displayed the folders, but wouldn't allow me to paste files. This procedure works like a charm in every version of Windows I use at work. To me the irony of this that Apple pretty much invented the whole drag and drop GUI, right? Regardless, they are touted as being so user friendly and this just hammered another nail in the coffin for me when it comes to Macs. I'll admit that they look purty, though!
Both Mac fans are despondent over the news of the market share slippage...
"Nature bats last..."
I'd have to say that from my limited sampling, these numbers are very possibly off and a .2% downward change is likely statistically insignificant, especially given their sampling methods. Traffic from my blog primarily from the US shows about 19% of traffic is from the Macintosh (200-900 unique visitors/day). ... shows a steady increase in the percentage of Macintosh users that have visited over the past few years.
They were actually reporting a 0.02% change, which most people would consider noise. Claims of accuracy to the five places are silly, unless you have millions of hits.
w3schools.com OS index shows a growth in share for September of 0.2%, though they have a less generous estimate of 3.8% total share.
Everywhere I look, I see more people using Mac and Linux. It's hard to believe the combined share is less than 1 in 10.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
So, "the Mac OS had 4.35 per cent of the world's operating system share last December. Now it only has 4.33 per cent." Is that, by any chance, a share of a "market" that consists mostly of corporations and IT departments?
The Mac has always had that problem. "Market share" depends entirely on how you choose to define the market. Among people who don't want Apple computers, Apple's market share is small.
Cessna has a market share of about 4% of the airplane market (Cessna has revenues of $3.5 billion, Boeing $52.45 billion, Airbus $34.4 billion) but nobody worries about Cessna. If you define "the market" as "general aviation," then suddenly Cessna's market share becomes 33%.
What next? The Seattle Caviar Company's share of the egg market is slipping? Sunkist Oranges only has an 0.001% share of the apple market? Shinola has only a 1% market share of the shit market?
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
"It must be disappointing to Apple and Mac fans to see what is basically a flat line in desktop market share."
Not as bone chilling as the news that "Other" (that's French for Linux, boysngirls) has about as many users as WinME.
"Sloppy metrics" is the understatement of the decade.
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
IIRC even Steve Jobs said something early this year about being surprised at sales being stronger than expected. The PPC to Intel transition is a major one and is an excellent long term move. But it did cause some people to hold off on buying waiting for more native software, and allowing time for the shaking out of any minor glitches in the first products. A few probably also held off on buying when they heard that the Core 2 chips were coming.
It is pretty obvious that the move was a wise choice and that both Macintosh users and Apple will be better off long term. The appeal of the new generation of machines can be expected to increase over time. In addition to new features in the OS, it is reasonable to expect that 10.5 will bring even better performance. It'll likely make better use of multiple CPU cores, use the GPU horsepower for other tasks, use the Core 2 supplemental SSE3 instructions (I've heard them called both SSSE3 and SSE4), and use of the 64-bit capabilities. The software for Windows support will also be more mature (Apple's utility is currently beta).
The release of Vista will likely bring an increase in the number of people pondering new machines instead of just an OS upgrade. With Apple being more visible than in the past some of those people will opt for getting Macs instead (either solely for the Apple experience, or to run Windows too). Some may also be playing wait and see with Vista. If it isn't really, really, wonderful, it'll help Apple.
What apple really cares about (and what matters for OS adoption) is how many people are making serious or primary use of OS X. What these numbers show is what portion of web browsing is done in "OS X"
Now given the recent release of boot camp, parrells and similar programs it seems likely that a significant percentage of OS X users will spend say 5% or more of their time in windows. If the growth in market share for OS X is usually less than the average percent of time OS X users have started spending in windows it would look like the usage is down even if there was an actual ncrease in the number of people buying and using OS X.
In short it seems likely this is an artifact of the recent ability of OS X users to effectiely run windows.
If you liked this thought maybe you would find my blog nice too:
Anyone who thinks that a 0.02% change is likely to be statistically significant has to be smoking crack. Of course, with enough users and a rigorous enough methodology, it's possible, but I doubt it.
The fact that Apple is running out of suckers does not surprise me.
Commodity/standard/cheap hardware + GNU/Linux = you win!
Shouldn't that have been "...teh SUXORZ!!"
I am not an Apple fan, but those numbers have no meaning for me. As you would learn in any statistics class, any statistical number you get should be reported with some 'error bar'. What if the samplig was done so that the actual Mac usage was 4.35+-0.1? What if the error is 0.01? The same number would have two different meanings...
The ones where the mac and pc persona debate who is better. The "facts" they use in the adds are pure BS, and the Mac persona is a moron. It's kind of sad because Apple does have a lot to brag about but they'd rather BS.
I don't want to start a holy war here, but what is the deal with you Mac fanatics? I've been sitting here at my freelance gig in front of a Mac (a 8600/300 w/64 Megs of RAM) for about 20 minutes now while it attempts to copy a 17 Meg file from one folder on the hard drive to another folder. 20 minutes. At home, on my Pentium Pro 200 running NT 4, which by all standards should be a lot slower than this Mac, the same operation would take about 2 minutes. If that.
In addition, during this file transfer, Netscape will not work. And everything else has ground to a halt. Even BBEdit Lite is straining to keep up as I type this.
I won't bore you with the laundry list of other problems that I've encountered while working on various Macs, but suffice it to say there have been many, not the least of which is I've never seen a Mac that has run faster than its Wintel counterpart, despite the Macs' faster chip architecture. My 486/66 with 8 megs of ram runs faster than this 300 mhz machine at times. From a productivity standpoint, I don't get how people can claim that the Macintosh is a superior machine.
Mac addicts, flame me if you'd like, but I'd rather hear some intelligent reasons why anyone would choose to use a Mac over other faster, cheaper, more stable systems.
for a minute there, i lost myself...
In my personal experience, I know more and more people buying Apple who never have in the past. Especially in the notebook computer market.
I wouldn't be surprised if that is what most everyone else here is seeing as well.
Sometimes these studies aren't an exercise in what the truth is in the real world, especially if they are funded by those who don't like what is happening in the real world.
As to TFA, I have a question... There are lots of Slashdotters that can probably answer this for me pretty well: Isn't .02% statistically negligible, WRT a market trend report?
Mod me OT on this one, It's fine with me.
I'm always amazed at the vitriol that spews forth on this subject. Although, frankly, post threads like those in response to this article are always interesting to read (and sometimes funny).
IMVHO, use what machine and OS you like, like what machine and OS you use (if you have a choice). It isn't the chip, the windowing system, the kernel, or the manufacturer... it's what it does for you personally. I like Solaris, Fedora, Mac OS (any, really), XP, 2000, Irix, HP/UX... well, just about any of them. The hardware is always a relative benchmark to me. If I like it, and it works great without kicking me in the pants every time I try to use it, then I use it. I enjoy my little Blade 100 as much as my VAIO as much as my iMac G5. Like what you use, and use what you like.
A Passionate Independent Musician
I'll tell you what the post means. It means that somebody has paid a press agent to put stories in the media pushing an anti-Apple agenda.
Let me explain a bit about HitsLink. Their reason for existence is to be a paid "hit"-man for publicity pros. Are you CBS-Viacom or the Radio Industry? Do you need to make it seem to the business community that Howard Stern is tanking on Sirius Satellite Radio? Have Hitslink provide a story saying that the number of Lycos searches for "Howard Stern" are down by X %. Forget the fact that everybody knows that you'd go to Sirius.com if you want to read about Stern. Forget that nobody uses Lycos any more.
Let's say you are Salem Radio Network and you want it to seem like conservative commentator, former Sec'y of Education and degenerate gambler Bill Bennett's morning show is really happening. Get HitsLink to create a story saying that he's "Number 9 in the nation". Forget that he's just been dumped from the third biggest market in America (Chicago). Forget that the actual listings show that there are 24 talk shows ahead of Bennett's. Let's just round the figures out so that there are 2 or 3 talk shows tied for Number 1, Number 2, etc. So you can say that Bennett is in the Number 9 slot when in reality he is number 24 out of 30.
It pays to know that nearly every story that you see or hear in the media has been placed there by a press agent or public relations department in the form of a press release, which gets reworked (sometimes) by a "reporter" (really a stenographer) into a "story" which is presented as "news". It pays to know that outfits like HitsLink exist just to spread manure.
You have to ask yourself if a story like this passes your own "smell test".
You are welcome on my lawn.
The Z80 is a sperset of the 8080, not the 8088. The 8088 is a superset (IIRC) of the 8080. However, neither the Z80 nor the 8088 are not supersets of eachother, so not all Z80 code will run on 8088 and not all 8088 code will run on Z80.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
Celeron D, 256MB, 80GB HD, CDRW, 6-in-1 media reader, 17" Monitor, All-in-one printer - $149. That's why Apple's marketshare is slipping. They've done wonders to lower their prices, but the Wintel world has not been standing still.
The more you regulate a company, the worse its products become.
Stop running M$ on your macbook - you're feeding the Windoze zealots with misleading statistics !
As an aside, I do occasionaly need to use IE for cr@ppily encoded sites - maybe this stat can be interpreted as an increase in cr@ppy websites is driving macbook users to use parallels/IE for browsing ...
There's a sucker [%s/sucker/stat/g] born every minute ...
I want my computers to work when I pull them out of the box.
Having just bought my first "pre-made" computer in years (a new laptop from Compaq), I find this statement *hilarious*.
After taking this thing "out of the box", I spent no less than 30 minutes weaving my way through pre-setup wizards and registration dialogs. I then spent no less than *two hours* uninstyalling tosns of pre-loaded crap software I did not wan ton this machine - stupid toy games, trial versions of anti virus, trial versions of DVD burning software, trial this and trial that, all cluttering up my tray with 15+ icons.
In comparison, last time I built a computer, it took me about 30 minutes to put the pieces together, and 30 minutes to install the OS. Net savings of 1.5 hours and god knows how many hundred dollars.
Of course building your own laptop is not really an option, hence why I bought this one. But god, I buy pre-made PC's as little as humanly possible.
Macs on the other hand - I have not had any real experience with yet. From what I hear they funciton much better "out of box" - no pre-configuring, no trial craptastic software pre-installed.
The summary of this article is tagged fud and notfud. In fact, I've noticed that most if not every article is either tagged "fud" or "slownewsday."
"Beware of he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart he dreams himself your master."
There is indeed a lot more choice on the PC side. Of course most of it is poorly designed junk, since the focus of the PC world is how cheaply you can make things, not how enjoyable you can make the ownership experience. And that's why you can buy PCs for so much less than Macs. It's not that Apple's ripping you off, it's that Steve quite laudably refuses to make junk.
Of course there are exceptions, like Alienware and the like, but they're comparably priced to Macs. It's nice in an abstract sort of way to see all that choice, but that makes the Apple zone, where all is tasteful and beautifully designed, look like the best place there is.
However, one of your statements is simply not true. I hooked up my PowerBook G4 to a VGA projector with the adapter Apple provided in the box, for free. So compatibility with projection LCDs is no reason to stick with Windows.
D
After taking this thing "out of the box", I spent no less than 30 minutes weaving my way through pre-setup wizards and registration dialogs ... Macs on the other hand - I have not had any real experience with yet. From what I hear they funciton much better "out of box" - no pre-configuring, no trial craptastic software pre-installed.
You heard wrong. There is registration, there is wizard like tools to setup networking and email, etc. There is also trial software, MS-Office for one.
I just went and speced out a hefty Mac and a Dell. Had to go with the super duper video since it was the only model both offered.
Dual 3.0Ghz Xeon
4GB Memory (4x 1GB sticks on both, ECC on both)
4X 500GB SATA drives
512MB NVidia Quadro
DVD +/- everything drive
No monitor on either system
Apple: $7,449 firm
Dell: $5,575 before the infamous Dell discounting starts
One year warranty on the Apple, Three years Economy OnSite on the Dell
Democrat delenda est
There is always a slowing trend in buying consumer goods between July and October - before the holiday season. I am not sure if this data is compared to the PC market share for the same period. The focus is more on this umber now because of the increased market ad media focus on Apple.
about 50% of Apple's hardware sales are laptops, and they are going to possibly break a company record this quarter by selling over 1 million laptops. the previous record was last quarter and that was a bit under 800,000. the iMacs are selling well, and the Mac Pro and Xserve finished off the last of the PPC Macs. that should resolve some holdouts. it sounds like the above post explains it that they are not combining PPC and Intel based Mac OS X hits.
l e-laptop-sales-to-push-past-the-million-mark.html
just one source of this:
http://macuser.pcpro.co.uk/macuser/news/93513/app
just to save you some time..... if you look for more info on google you may want to do a -recall if you put in: Apple million laptop
I priced this out on the Dell Home site and it didn't even come close to being true. Unless the Dell Home Site offers a $1000 discount that they don't offer to businesses and the Apple Business site offers a $1000 discount that Apple Home doesn't offer, then you are completely off with your figures. I am almost certain you are comparing a 3.7Ghz Dell to a 3.0Ghz Apple. Will someone please provide price points and specs for this exceptional case of an Apple being cheaper than a comparable anything? Last time I checked even Sony made less expensive stuff.
http://www.coolest-gadgets.com/20060919/is-apple-
If that is really a random sampling, it has everything to do with overall market share. But it isn't. It is a sample of the market which subscribes to HitsLink. That's not a random sample.
Vidi, Vici, Veni
This kind of topic always gets so many responses ... its just crazy! And once again, the "report" that kicked it all off has no information on the methodology used.
*Yawn* As long as Apple stays in business and I can upgrade my machines every 5 years or so, I'm a happy camper. Nobody is forcing the unaquafied masses to buy Macs, so they should all just settle down and reinstall their systems or something.
Not all random numbers are created equally.
How many people (like me) are waiting for a Core 2 Duo MacPro? Perhaps we would make up 0.03% of Mac OS's market share?
No, I will not work for your startup
Disclaimer: I am a very happy owner of a Mac Pro.
I'd prefer the platform to have enough marketshare that developers can make money and Apple to make a profit, but not big enough for Virus writers and spyware authors to care (the way it is now).
I honestly have never understood this idea that Macs would suddenly get more interest from Virus writers if they had market share.
If you were a cracker and you saw these pompous Apple commercials, saw the Apple trolls that say that Apple can do no wrong, and saw all this news coverage about POTENTIAL viruses for OS X that turn out to be garbage, would this not be an obviously huge target to shoot for if you were going for notoriety?
No. I have no doubt you'd get some more interest if there were more market share, but basically Apple has been giving crackers the raspberry for years now. I highly doubt they're just idly ignoring a target that would likely get them huge press and shut Apple up about being Virus-free. That's way more interesting than an XP exploit, which we've seen hundreds of.
Why does OS X have to have an increasing marketshare to remain successful?
Because it's a publically traded company?
Does Netcraft confirm?
Warning: Rant to follow
Unless you're Ballmer or Jobs or a Linux distro company, does it really matter? I mean, really, really matter?
Do I, as a OS X user, see any sort of effect if OS X usage goes up or down?
In case you're wondering...no.
I guess I just get tired of Linux fanboys declaring that "we must get this to the desktops of the unwashed masses" or the Mac fanboys stomping around saying how much Microsoft is copying from OS X into Vista, and the Microsoft fanboys sitting around all smug with their favorite OS enjoying a practical monopoly status.
You use what works best for what you want to do, market share be damned. I use OS X for some things and WinXP for others because they each have their strengths in different areas. If John and Jane Public can easily get their digital photos of Junior's 8th birthday party by simply plugging their camera into their Windows box and pressing a button, more power to them. If you develop the Next Great Thing in an Unbuntu environment, congratualtions.
If a WinXP platform did what I want it to do as well as, or better than, OS X for a better value then I would have stuck with WinXP. If the engineering tools I need to use every day worked on a Linux platform as easily as on an WinXP or OS X platform, I would have stuck with Linux.
I coouldn't care less if OS X market share changed 0.02%, up, down, or sideways.
I'm done ranting.
Government's idea of a balanced budget: take money from the right pocket to balance...oh who am I kidding?
As a Mac user, I could care less about this. If people want to continue laboring away on an unsecure, unreliable piece of s___ Windows OS, they are more than welcome to continue their suffering, hopefully in silence. I'll continue to work efficiently, securely and quietly in my reliable, intuitive and wonderful low-market-share OS X in the meantime. I mean, I actually got what I paid for when I bought my Mac. Three years down the line it's still running like brand new. I could never say that about my old Windows machines... However cheaply priced they may be these days, I wouldn't take one even if it was free for all the hassles that come with them.
Blah, blah, blah...whatever... We're all such losers for caring so much about this stuff in the first place, right?
My goodness tell whoever is hiring you that they're spending more money in wasted freelance time than a new mac would cost!
Netscape! I shudder in horror. 486?
[In regards to statistics] "Then there was the man who drowned crossing a stream with an average depth of six inches."
W. I. E. Gates
When you give no specs or prices, I find it difficult to believe that you can find a situation where a compable Mac isn't significantly more expensive than a wintel PC.
What do you mean by "top of the line?"
If you mean that you simply picked the most expensive options on each model - then the comparison is nonsense.
If what you meant was "best for your needs" - then of course this is entirely subjective.
If you compared architecture for architecture with same sized/types of drives, memory, video - there is just no way I can think of to obtain your numbers.
Here are my comparables:
Micron PC: www.mpccorp.com
Total Price $2,685.00
Microsoft(R) Windows(R) XP Professional w/SP2
Dual-Core Intel Xeon 3.0GHz Dual Processor (2x2MB Cache, 667MHz FSB)
1GB (2X512MB) ECC DDR2 FBDIMM SDRAM
500GB RAID Edition SATA II 3.0Gb/s 16MB Hard Drive (7,200RPM)
256MB Nvidia GeForce 7300GS Graphics Card PCI Express (VGA DVI-I TV-OUT)
Integrated Dual Gigabit Ethernet
Mouse already included in Microsoft Wireless Optical Desktop
NF640 Base Chassis w/Fixed 550w Power
Microsoft(R) Office 2003 Basic Edition
Sv.1st-3rd Yr.Manufacturers Ltd Warranty.Tech Support & Parts
SV Customer Selects No Uplifted Server Service
Apple Computers: www.apple.com
Total price: $3857
Two 3.0GHz Dual-Core Intel Xeon
1GB (2 x 512MB)
500GB 7200-rpm Serial ATA 3Gb/s
NVIDIA GeForce 7300 GT 256MB (single-link DVI/dual-link DVI)
One 16x SuperDrive
Apple USB Modem
Apple Wireless Keyboard and Apple wireless Mighty Mouse - U.S. English
Mac OS X - U.S. English
AppleCare Protection Plan for Mac Pro/Power Mac (w/or w/o Display) - Auto-enroll
Yes, the link provided in the story, http://marketshare.hitslink.com/report.aspx?qprid= 5, lists the market share of the various Windows versions, Mac, and 'other'. And the Aug 2006 stats show WinME+Win98 at 3.5%, and 'other' at 2.07%. But that 2.07% isn't all Linux, not even close.
= 2, the share is broken down into much more detail (rather than throwing the low share OSes into 'other'), and Linux is listed at only 0.47%.
If you look at another link on the same site, http://marketshare.hitslink.com/report.aspx?qprid
-- "I never gave these stories much credence." - HAL 9000
Aren't they just happy using their computers? Apple fanbois are the most obsessed bunch of douchbags I've ever seen. No wonder Apple's market share is slipping!
Tell that to my brand new Mac Book Pro sitting in front of me (which I purchased after dumping my Acer Aspire 5672).
Also tell that to my PC, which has been replaced by a Mac Mini.
Windows has the bug gun in its pocket. Huge commercial application support, hardware and driver support along with games. You can walk into a best buy, a walmart, a savemart wherever software or computer hardware is sold and it will always be available for windows.
Apple has an advantage over linux with apps but strangely enough, they have not gained large scale adoption and support for "games" and commercial apps. What so I can run photoshop on my MAC. Not everyone that uses a MAC is a graphic designer.
Linux even with its vast improvments is bottom barrel in terms of commercial apps, driver hardware support and games.
Microsoft was on the ball with this in the early 80's before most of their competitors even gave it a thought.
Market share does not matter, and never has. Apple sells millions of computers and makes a nice profit for the stockholders.
Twenty years ago Apple had a certain market share of a small number of personal computers sold in the world.
Today Apple has a certain smaller percentage of a much larger number of personal computers in the world. But it's selling more new computers now than it ever has, many more per year than it did twenty years ago.
As long as Apple makes money, putting out sophisticated computer systems, who cares about market share?
If I only had US$0.05 for every time I heard somebody predict doom for Apple over its tiny market share...
With bootcamp and intel processors there is an increased proportion of macs that will run windows and to run windows you have to buy windows. Does that affect the statistical OS proportions?
Given that 3ghz 5160's are less than $900 to begin with?
3 05&dept_id=2522
http://www.ajump.com/ajump/product.asp?pf_id=5240
Nobody likes to drink alone.
There is indeed a lot more choice on the PC side. Of course most of it is poorly designed junk, since the focus of the PC world is how cheaply you can make things, not how enjoyable you can make the ownership experience. And that's why you can buy PCs for so much less than Macs. It's not that Apple's ripping you off, it's that Steve quite laudably refuses to make junk.
Or, you're just being gullible. Apple is not a charity, it is a for profit corporation, just like PC vendors. Apple's quality will be better than some, and worse than others. There's no magic pixie dust here. Recent history would suggest that Apple's current products are worse than most for quality. ie, massive battery recall, overheating, discolouration...
Oh, and my Acer laptop looks much, much nicer than those white plastic MacBooks.
However, one of your statements is simply not true. I hooked up my PowerBook G4 to a VGA projector with the adapter Apple provided in the box, for free. So compatibility with projection LCDs is no reason to stick with Windows.
You don't use projectors very often, do you? They're generally built into the room, with a VGA cable running through the wall to a jack, with another VGA cable running up to a podium. Adding another connection point to that mess is simply not acceptable. Futhermore, you're absolutely fucked if you forget the adaptor. No one else in the room will have one, because they sensibly bought laptops with standard VGA ports. Even if they *do* happen to have one lying around, it will be a standard DVI adaptor, not the mini DVI on MacBooks.
It'd be interesting to know how many people counted for Windoze (XP, 2000, NT) are mac owners surfing from work
-- "At Microsoft, quality is job 1.1" -- PC Magazine, Nov. 1994
I am about to buy the best laptop I can find, or maybe a desktop plus a very light laptop. I really want to buy a Mac but am moving away from it!
I always was an Apple person and I have a bunch of old macs in my closet. But I've used linux as my main computer for some years.
I hate using linux as a desktop at least on this laptop, which ran Win2K fine but was dying on RH9 and finally I am on blackbox now.
I used linux because I'm a developer and also because I hate Microsoft.
I want a Mac because it is cool and mostly virus free compared to MS.
The opposing side is I need WinXP for business. My brother who has a Mac book pro and uses windows in an emulator recommended it ito me but I heard it is slow. I heard Bootcamp is not totally there yet or needs an unsupported hack to be usable. I am waiting now because I heard about battery fires, macs not being allowed to be used on planes, and an upcoming announcement from Jobs. I want a Jaguar mac with the time machine bad but I'm waiting.
I think there must be a lot of people like me, enough to make that minus 0.02 go positive. People who know all the issues and still want a mac but it is killing them to make that decision. And they are in fact moving away from the mac like me right now.
For me to buy a Mac Book Pro, Apple must provide
- a supported way to run WinXP natively on another partition and be able to access that data from OS X.
- ironclad assurance about the batteries
- info about whether Jaguar is available now and what is this announcement in October we are supposed to wait for?
- Finally, I love macs but I have been screwed by Apple lots of times, starting way back with the Apple III (I had an Apple II Integer Plus too, FWIW. And a fat mac, a quadra, a powerbook, and oh heck with it). I am willing to buy the best system they have so it will not go obsolete right away but I do NOT want them to take my money and then screw me over again. I want the XP side to work like an ordinary windows machine, not a slow machine. It should be a screaming fast machine.
You know reading this I'm thinking, why do you want a Mac? It's all cool but really you need a PC for business. And I'm still moving away from the mac. It's insane. I guess I have to wait for Jobs again?
Apple has produced a great operating system. I can't tell you how many people I've met who say "my next computer is going to be a Mac." But that's just their problem. Most people aren't going to ditch a perfectly good computer just to run OSX. By limiting OSX to Apple computers, they're going to drastically slow the growth of their operating system. I'd bet 90% of the people I've met who say "my next computer is going to be a Mac" would go out and pay $200 to put OSX on their current computer a lot sooner than they'd buy a new computer just for the operating system.
I don't think that survey is accurate. I remember reading that the number of Macs in Africa had tripled in the last six months.
#DeleteChrome
Were they trying to figure out the total addressable market or the install base? Nobody is still selling Windows 98 for crying out loud. Regardless, their stats are meaningless even for that number.
Jesus was a compassionate social conservative who called individuals to sin no more.
The site I have data for is large (around 10mm pageviews per day) and is general in appeal (not an Apple or tech related site). Our Mac percentage has been increasing slowly but steadily. For September so far it is at 7.63%. I predict that they're doing fine.
Cheers.
YOu guys love to hate Apple. What about intalled user base? The improtant number.
I don't know if this story is an indication of a problem, but here it is anyway. After seeing a couple of her girlfriends with macs and "how easy they are", my wife convinced me to get her one as well. So we got a white MacBook, which is nice and sleek. My wife used it for maybe 2-3 weeks, then went back to her old HP laptop. She keeps on saying that she'll be using her Mac, so we'll see. But one way or another there are some significant issues on the mac vis-a-vis migration for former windows users. For instance, the Mac store offers free migration which is good, but I feel there was no attention to detail. For instance, even though they were told that my had a Hotmail account, they setup email in the Mail application instead of Entourage, which can actually read Hotmail. There were a couple of other issues with migration as well.
Finally, if you are windows power user, MacOS leaves you underwhelmed. Where is the freaking maximize button? Seriously, not what the application thinks Maximize should be, but actually maximizing the window to the maximum real estate of the monitor. While at the store I asked one of the clerks where the real Maximize button was and his answer was (for real), that a "Maximize function was a Windows thing and unnecessary on the Mac". Ok, what if I like to browse full screen? "Well, most web sites display their content in 800x600". Slashdot immediately came to mind.
Times have changed. People are compromising mass numbers of systems and creating armies of zombie systems that they control via IRC botnets. They sell control of those systems to spammers for big money. The mac is simply not as profitable for them. It's supply and demand. There is a huge market for PC vulnerabilities.
There are mac rootkits out there. There are plenty of smart hackers studying the Mac operating system and finding vulnerabilities. It's just that there is little financial incentive to infect large numbers of mac systems, so it's not really a problem for the majority of users. This is not the case for the PC.
A 0.02% change? Wow, 1 in 5000 Mac OS X users have defected. The sky is falling, quick, hide!
put a second and third mouse button on their laptops, and got rid of those awful touch pads, I would consider switching back. Oh, and better support for Linux would be good too.
Who moved my sig?
Where Apple have gone wrong in the desktop space is in the false belief that people are desperate for iLife applications like iDVD, iMovie, Garageband, iWorks, iPhoto and others. Actually, those are consumer applications with a definate "Steve on the stage" geewhiz but with a limited market in a world of physical media free content distribution (YouTube, Flickr etc) and more. Furthermore, and this is the crux of the issue, MOST people buy computers to solve problems, such as running their business. (Gamers buy consoles or DIY PCs.) And for all it's faults, Microsoft has, even if initially accidentally, created a vast 'ecosphere' of available solutions or tools that make creating turnkey solutions easy. A well organised iT person or team can form a company and then engineer and market solutions to small businesses using available MS and 3rd party MS tools - and very inexpensive unbranded PCs.
Once Apple encourage 3rd parties to put together solutions for those desiring them, then people will flock to the Macintosh's focused industrial design (in particular the Mac Mini) running the stable and virus free OSX.
One more thing, Apple needs to show more confidence in marketing it's really useful applications. I have recently purchased Apple's Keynote. For all it's limited flaws, it is one of the most compelling, fun and usefull applications I have ever had the joy to use. And it's helping me raise money for my company and sell our product! Now that is what I call a solution! (Don't even compare it to PowerPoint!)
(I am aware that Apple are limited in their promotion of Office type apps as part of past agreements with MS. It's time they shook that one loose, else they will always be the superior underdog. Hmmm?
O'WONDERWe're working on it.
Uhm... Those appliactions aren't trial or crapware. The Omni apps are full versions of pretty cool (and pretty expensive) applications. StuffIt Expander used to come with Mac OS X, but does so no longer. The reason it came with Mac OS X was that lots of applications were delivered in .sit files, and you need Expander to open these. Contratulations on "cleaning them off," though - dragging a few applications to the Trash must have been a really complicated undertaking.
I see people, even die hard Windows users, buying either MacBook Pros, or Mac Minis, like its going out of fashion, and I don't even live in the US. In fact, the only people I still see buying Windows are the poor suckers who think Outlook is a good mail client, and that Windows networking is acceptable.
I wonder how much of the decline is credited not to an increase in shares for platofrms such as Windows, but repurchases.
My sister owns a Dell laptop. Just recently she purchased a PC desktop for herself. Now technically she's still just the one person running Windows, but she would count as two because of licenses.
Also, re-buys and upgrades must be considered. If someone running XP upgrades to Vista in the future, Microsoft as technically sold both that person's copy of XP as well as the upgrade to Vista.
From what I have seen, just in my office, we get a much longer shelf-life out of low-end Macs and often rebuy PCs.
Those who believe the Internet is private,
find their privates are on the Internet.
On the one hand, they didn't count intel as mac, so market share's up 0.6% not down 0.2% by their measure.
On the other hand, at least they're measuring market share by use and not sales.
On the gripping hand, I expected Apple's market share to be down significantly now because of the uncertainty over the Intel switch and the very real teething problems, so even down a little would be better than I was expecting.
On the... damn, out of hands. On the other other hand, it's kind of irritating that "Intel" seems to translate to "good" in people's minds...
Return on Investment: Where is the benefit in gaining access to a machine only one out of every 100 people (roughly) uses and which is even more uncommon in business environments ?
False positives: millions of machines are used by government and by businesses, which will A) not have personal and credit card info to steal and B) will be wiped and restored far sooner than a consumer machine. And what is going to be more valuable information: the credit card number of a consumer plunking down two grand on a Macbook Pro or large screen iMac, or the buyer of one of those $400 Dell systems?
Infection rates: Any "virus" infection is going to spread far, far more slowly on Macs than PCs. Heck, there's a pretty good chance it wouldn't even hit critical mass, because of Macs' relative scarcity, and never make it outside the initial infection zone.
Nonsense. There are more Macs out there today than Windows machines when the first PC viruses started going around. It wouldn't crash corporate networks like Code Red did, but that's because most corporate networks are made up entirely of Wintel PC's.
No, Windows has been a cesspool security wise because of Microsoft's piss poor design decisions, not because of marketshare. If Apple had Active X, Internet Explorer, Outlook, auto-installing internet applications, and left ports and services open all over the place, they too would have a rotten record on security. If Microsoft had decent privledge separation, started using a firewall with Windows 98 and had some decent security models for their web apps, they would have a much better record on security. And the big traffic-stopping-billion-dollar-costing viruses have not been written to collect data, but for kudos or "because they could." And what is going to get a script kiddie more kudos: writting the thousandth network crashing Windows virus, or write the first ever Mac crashing virus?
But perhaps interesting. I manage a large U's main website (2 million visitors since 9/1).
For September (through 9/19), the platform percentages are:
Windows: 93.83%
Mac: 5.89% (Of this, PPC is 72.51% and Intel Mac is at 27.49%)
For all of April of this year, the percentages were:
Windows: 94.5%
Mac: 5.16 (100% PPC)
In the same time periods, Linux has dropped 0.05%, from 0.25% to 0.20%
As to TFA, I have a question... There are lots of Slashdotters that can probably answer this for me pretty well: Isn't .02% statistically negligible, WRT a market trend report?
That information is not available. You see, the source data was not presented, only the results without and details of the methodology. This is PR, not science and is designed to influence people who pay attention to PR, instead of look at scientific data. The fact that you know what statistically significant means, is indication that you are not in the target market. The PR firm that puts out these studies just looks for a way to use statistics to support the position of whomever pays them. They don't release their data and make really obviously misleading statements because they know most people will never notice anything more than a headline that says, "OS X Failing in the Market." This is the same company that produced a bunch of stats showing how iPod sales are declining and the bubble has burst and used the normal retail sales cycle that happens every year as justification. Gee sales are lower than they were just before last christmas and just like in almost every other retail sales market on the planet? We'd better write a bunch of articles immediately so people know and lets forget to mention that this trend effects anything other than iPods.
I'm always amazed at the vitriol that spews forth on this subject. Although, frankly, post threads like those in response to this article are always interesting to read (and sometimes funny).
There are numerous causes for this. Mac users are a minority, and deviating from the norm in any way is socially a big taboo. As a result, Mac users feel the need to compensate by ardently defending their decisions. Likewise, pointing anything inferior about a product a Mac, Windows, or Linux user is using is a direct attack on their ego. You're telling them emotionally, that they were wrong. Especially for large financial investments, like a computer, people tend to irrationally defend whatever decision they made, because they feel threatened. Finally, many new Mac users find suddenly that a lot of the problems they were having have suddenly disappeared when they get a Mac. As a result, they tend to be astonished that Macs are not more popular and very vocal about praising them, sometimes to excess. All this leads to a culture clash, where people get very loud and often irrationally defensive.
IMVHO, use what machine and OS you like, like what machine and OS you use (if you have a choice). It isn't the chip, the windowing system, the kernel, or the manufacturer... it's what it does for you personally.
Any rational person who uses multiple OS's regularly quickly sees that each has things they do better than others. The problem is most people have only really used one, so they argue from a position of ignorance, simply to defend a choice they don't really have a lot of information about. People also have trouble empathizing with others, especially via weak mediums like blogs, so they operate under the assumption that everyone has the same needs and wants as they do. Add to this an unhealthy dose of misinformation from PR campaigns and astroturf and a few trolls and rabble rousers who just enjoy causing trouble and you get the loud, angry mess that is a OS flame war.
The only thing to do is sit back, enjoy the funny parts, and occasionally try to answer factual questions to help those who truly want real info.
And I'm hardly alone in thinking that way. Lots of people have money issues, even with the much improved Mac pricing, and wait is one of the best rules in computer purchasing. Wait until the heat and battery issues are cleared up. Wait for the next OS. Wait for the rumored compact 12" model using low-voltage chips with 10-hour battery life. Waiting always gets you more for less, particularly when the current models have "issues."
In the Windows world, the opposite process may be taking place. People are buying now, so they don't get stuck with all the hassles Vista will have its first few years. Vista, at best, will be a lot like OS X's 10.1, a bit buggy and lacking in even the necessary refinements.
No, this news story is a yawner concoceted by those who don't know what they're writing about.
I'm surprised you didn't make the comment, but your figures are more proof that OS X is treading water.
Take a look at the downward trend or Mac OS, and how it almost matches the upward trend of Macintel. There's some lag between the two (on a per-month basis), but over the course of the year MacIntel increases 0.62 and Mac OS decreases 0.64. What this indicates to me is that, for the most part, OS X is just barely treading water. Most new purchases are from existing Mac users (which, from my experience, would be consistent with their loyalty).
Yes, I agree with most of the posters here that we should ignore the "total marketshare" numbers, but the relative marketshare of Mac OS versus Macintel has much more meaning, and may indicate a trend of zero growth. This is not to say new customers AREN'T buying mew Macintels (I bought one, and I never owned a Mac in my life), it's just that they've also lost some customers with the move to Intel.
Man is the animal that laughs.
And occasionally whores for Karma.
In other news Mac users reached th end-of-the-internet faster than PC users, accounting for a decrease per capita of Mac users online.
Funny thing is, Mac market share isn't so important, because it's "felt" market share is much higher anyways.
I switched to a Mac in August. I'll never look back, I don't even know why the fuck I even put up with Windos at all, ever. And mind you, I was using mainly Linux anyways when I made the switch (and darn, is Linux behind OSX in comfort and usability!).
A colleague did the same. Another one as well. Two others are seriously considering. And that's the general picture. Market share isn't slipping from my "small random sample", which is probably just as valid as that from the article.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
I'm curious to see September and October 2006, when students have returned to school.
I believe Macs have a higher penetration in all areas of education than in the rest of the world, which should push those figures back up. In fact, if Apple is gaining marketshare, we should see a substantial increase over the same month a year ago.
It's strange that HitBox's stats don't seem to go back more than a year.
I have something to say.
I don't think there is anything else to say:
OMG ! Apple is dying !!!
Now I propopse we form a big human chain and everyone shout the same thing when his turn comes.
Straw man
Baseless comparison
Matter of opinion
Ad hominem
Untrue
FUD
If Apple truly wants to see its market share go into the double digits it will develop a MacOS gaming platform. I've used both Windows and MacOS for several years and would only use MacOS if I could run all my modern games on it. I work in the IT industry and have many co-workers who would switch to MacOS if they didn't have to give up their gaming platform to do so. I know Apple enjoys portraying itself as the computer manufacturer for the artistic, business and graphical design crowd, but what would be so wrong about offering a high end gaming solution as well???
These same sites that complain the 'Hits Link' service is not a reliable measure of OS usage proudly display their Alexa rankings... compiled by users of the increasingly marginalized Alexa desktop service.
"I will trust Google to 'do no evil' until the founders no longer run it." Hello Alphabet.