Vista Taking a Nibble Out of Apple in OS Wars?

PetManimal writes "Despite all of the positive buzz about the Mac operating system and the 'halo effect' of iPod sales, Mac OS X market share actually dropped last month, reports Computerworld: 'The share of PowerPC-based Macs fell ... from 4.29% in February to 3.94% in March. That dip was not fully offset by an increase in Intel-based Mac hardware, leading to a overall net decline in Mac share of 0.3%, to 6.08% in March.' Meanwhile, Vista is rising, the article says, with just over 2% of computers connected to the Internet using the new Windows OS. The figures are from a company called Net Applications, which collects its data from the browsers of visitors to its network of 40,000+ Web sites."

Comments

Dualboot?

[norminator]

I guess Boot Camp has just barely started supporting Vista, but how much of this could be due to dual-booting OSX and Vista on the same machine? Or from people that beta tested Vista? I tried out the beta, then installed a release copy of Vista on my work laptop, but then I switched back after a couple of months.

Not a shocker

[SengirV]

The macs haven't been rev'd in quite a while. I had hoped that revs would occur more frequently with the switch to intel, but it's simply not the case. And sorry, I don't count an additional option for 8-core on the Mac Pro a rev as much as it's another BTO option. Especially when they didn't change anything else on the machine.

http://buyersguide.macrumors.com/

mini is still at CD, not C2D. iMacs haven't been updated in over 200 days. macbook and MBP in 150. Compare that with the ONLY way to upgrade on the PC side - buy a new machine, and you begin to see the appeal of Vista over OS X when it comes to hardware sales. Finally, Tiger is on it's way out as well. So people are holding off on new Macs until they come pre-installed with leopard.

Would like to see the figures once leopard comes out ;)

Re:pfft

[Aqua OS X]

Dude, you need to take a statistics class or something. We're dealing with market percentages, not licenses sold. If I have a cup that has 50 green M&Ms and 50 red M&Ms, and I add 10 green M&Ms and 5 red M&Ms, green M&Ms are now less then 50%, but that doesn't mean I lost green M&Ms.

You need to account for licenses sold in relationship to market growth, transitions to new OS, and consumers who have postponed purchases while waiting for new operating systems.

That said, PPC OS X usage dropped, Intel OS X usage increased, people are timing hardware purchases to coincide with Leopard's release, and people are cashing-in on their wait for Vista. These are factors that may reduce the PPC Mac OS percentage for March, but that is not the same thing as a reduced install base, nor is it a sign that the growth of Apple's install base is entering an extended stagnation.