Slashdot Mirror
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.
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.
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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
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
Another explanation is that the potential Macintosh customer now realizes that the Mac is little different from a Dell PC or a HP PC. The principal difference is the price.
Well, I just priced out a new workstation comparing the top of the line MacPro and an equivalently configured Dell. I ended up buying the 3.0Ghz version of the MacPro for $1000 cheaper than an equivalent Dell.
Once Steve "I have a big ego" Jobs switched the Macintosh from the PowerPC to the Intel processor, the Macintosh lost its mystique.
Au contraire. Have you ever unboxed a new Mac? Have you ever really spent time with a Mac? While the OS is most of the experience, it goes beyond the OS.
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.
And with some simple tools, I can run Windows on my Mac. So?
Since the Mac is now essentially a PC clone, why would you pay a premium for Mac hardware?
See my above comment. It turns out that for the high end at least, the Macintosh is MUCH less expensive than a Dell or HP.
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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?
Bloody hell! It's back to beleaguered then.
spoonerize "magic trackpad"
Well, I just priced out a new workstation comparing the top of the line MacPro and an equivalently configured Dell. I ended up buying the 3.0Ghz version of the MacPro for $1000 cheaper than an equivalent Dell.
I'll be honest: I read that and I thought you were lying. So I went and looked for myself, and sure enough, I can't duplicate your results.
I can't get the Dell price down far enough. Only $1000 more expensive than the MacPro? The best I can do is $1500 more expensive.
Excuse me while I go and try to find all the pieces of my entire fucking worldview that you just completely shattered.
But why would a nerd buy a Dell or HP when you can build a clone for half the price?
Ummmmm, perhaps because I am not a nerd? Geek perhaps, yes. But not a nerd. Furthermore, it is not my job to build computers. Rather it is my job to do other things like generate and analyze data, teach, write grants and papers. I would much rather spend my time doing these things than building boxes, installing drivers, dealing with conflicts and such. I want my computers to work when I pull them out of the box. I want my computers to simply work when plugging in a peripheral without launching a wizard that says "I see you are trying to add new hardware". I want my computers to not constantly notify me in the middle of a presentation that my anti-virus software is out of date or than the computer suddenly discovered a new wireless network. (I've seen people who, for kicks when someone is making a presentation with a Windows laptop at a big conference, start creating new wireless networks).
When your time reaches a certain value/minute, you start to look for ways to optimize your life and for me at least, the Macintosh allows me to get work done without getting in the way.
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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.
I know this can be a little confusing to computer novices. The 3.73GHz Xeon is slower and uses more power than the 3.0GHz Xeon, even though they use the same socket. However, you shouldn't be talking shit, especially about a subject you know little about.
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Where's the 'ANY' key? I see Esk, Kitarl, and Pig-Up...