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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."
One word - 'LEOPARD'
:)
If there is a down blip, it's due to people waiting for Leopard, not because of vista, and ho boy...wait 'till you see her hit the track
> Aren't most Mac users waiting for leopard to come out
What, waiting for Leopard before browsing the web again? I you are goin to make an argument at least make one that makes sence.
Maybe like which web sites are the stats generated from, maybe those are somewhat windows biased?
+----------------- | What is the question!
The tone of this article is very misleading.
I do a lot of consulting work and it's very hard to get a new PC for someone that doesn't come with Vista. They don't want Vista but they have no choice. Then we get to deal with figuring out what software they need works and what needs patches and what just plain doesn't work and never will.
You're suggesting (seriously?) that you don't expect Vista to show up on more than 2% of desktops? I would like some of whatever it is you smoked this afternoon.
The actual decline they have reported is 0.3%; which I'm sure is well within there margin of error.
Which means, Apple's share hasn't changed. Despite the fact there are less PowerPC machines than before.
According to this: http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0933606.html there are about a billion internet users worldwide. 2% would be 20 mil. MS claims to have shipped 20 million, or so, copies of vista. So that means that every copy they have shipped, even on new computers at stores, has been sold and brought up on the internet pretty much. This seems... fishy.
Can we get real? Apple's market share dropped for one month? Let's see what could cause that:
There. That took about 3 seconds to think up. When Vista has displaced Apple for 3 months in a row, we can talk. Until then this is stupid hype designed to make Vista look like it isn't a dog sales wise (when from MS you would think it would have started selling like Windows 95 did). Plus, this is the PowerPC share that dropped. They are old and slow as hell (I'm using one). Now that CS3 is out (and was about to come out by the time they did this survey) you'd be an IDIOT to buy one. So the Intel side didn't jump up. People are probably waiting for CS3 (to put their requisitions in at work), or for Leopard (coming any time now, June 21st at the latest).
Non-story.
Comment forecast: Bits of genius surrounded by a sea of mediocrity.
A drop in overall percentage doesn't necessarily mean a drop in users. It could easily mean that Windows is growing, and the Mac market is stagnating before a new release.
LOAD "SIG",8,1
Yes, but that is not the point. You expect the percentages of PowerPC-based Macs to fall, but percentage of new Intel-based should increase of at least the same amount, which does not seem to be the case, according to the article.
The share of PowerPC-based Macs fell, though, from 4.29% in February to 3.94% in March. That dip was not fully offset by an increase in Intel-based Mac hardware(my emphasis), leading to a overall net decline in Mac share of 0.3%, to 6.08% in March.
FTA:
"Net Applications collects its data from the browsers of visitors to its network of more than 40,000 Web sites."
Any statistics that purport to show "usage" based on browser hits is inherently suspect, especially if the stats are used to imply they have some larger meaning. If they can answer these questions, I'll believe them:
- How are the servers of these "40,000 webs sites" identifying unique users? (server logs, scripts, or both? How long are the sessions they are looking at?)
- Are they looking at number of hits, unique user views, or what?
- How well can they ensure that machines are not being counted multiple times?
- Which sites are included? Are both microsoft.com and apple.com sites included? What about msn.com or mac.com? How many tech-savy sites are included and how many might-as-well-be-AOL newbie sites?
- Are the results from some sites weighted above or below other sites?
I'm not saying they haven't taken all these things into account, but publishing them (or referencing them by a third-party) without including how the data was gathered makes this all just so much noise.
You are fucking retarded and so are the ass-clowns that moderated your message up. There is no discrepancy and if you had read THE BLURB you would know that. My first thoughts were the same, but my brain functions for longer than a microsecond on each topic and actually bothered to READ THE SECOND SENTENCE.
I can't believe you'd take the time to write out a full post but not take the time to read a single paragraph. People like YOU contribute nothing but entropy! DIAF.
When you get your third new PC, put Ubuntu on the old one. See how snappy it feels, and how long it stays good. I know that my "old" P4 based desktop is kinda slow by modern standards, but damn if it's not fast as hell under Linux, especially since Linux doesn't become useless when you're running a heavy processing job, you can still surf the web or type up a document while something else is processing. The whole thing just feels snappier, even on older hardware.
My blog. Good stuff (when I remember to update it). Read it.
Firefox is pretty good on OS X. There seem to be a lot of whiners about it, but I have it running almost constantly with varying numbers of tabs and it's always worked very well. I certainly prefer it to Safari or Opera. Who cares about native widgets? I'm looking at the Web, not a bunch of Apple themed Web pages.
Even if we do assume that their figures are incredibly accurate, this is how it shakes out:
Windows: +0.20
Linux: +0.15
Mac: -0.30
Not a huge deal, although I think the Linux uptick is a bit of an unreported story here. Also, what's with the share of Windows NT growing from 0.71% to 0.80% (the only other MicroSoft OS showing growth)? That's like a 12.7% increase for an ancient OS! So, yeah, given that anomaly, I'm somewhat disinclined to give their figures that much weight.
pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
You really think a significant number of people are using parallels to web surf? And if they are -- running OS X but actually choosing to do basic stuff like web surfing within a virtualized XP -- that actually says to me that they prefer XP, and they are being correctly counted.
I never contend that apple has to sell OSX for any old box, as that would be business mistake for them, but if they aren't going to sell OSX, then they need to offer more hardware choices.
Mac market share is stable at about the 6% mark. These are the people who like integrated monitors or the toy mini. Pro just won't matter for market share as it is ultra high end.
If Apple actually has the slightest interest in increasing market share beyond the current they have to offer what mainstream buyers want and are used to. A decent mid size tower at an affordable price.
I actually want to buy a Mac. I use Linux/Solar/Windows at work and would like a decent Unix workstation at home, but don't find Linux polished enough (my desktop at work runs Redhat).
What is stopping me is the lack of decent midrange hardware without integrated monitor. This gap has to be obvious to Apple execs, perhaps they are moving the company in the direction of devices and away from computer and don't care about computer market share.
I will buy a new computer in the next 6 months. No midrange tower or equivalent and it will be another PC and that will be my computer for the next 4 or 5 years.
I went out to see it with some of my MIT buddies; we weren't expecting much after ST1, so it waay beat the expectation game. One of the guys gushed afterwards, "That was exponentially better than the last movie."
All being geeks, we turned and started at him. "Ummm," I said, raising one eyebrow, "you do realize you are extrapolating from only two data points?" He turned red as a beet.
But apparently industry analysts have no mathematical shame.
There's a million reasons why market share could bounce down or up in single month. Maybe people were waiting for Vista machines with more memory. Maybe the manufacturers gave some nice rebates. Maybe a couple of big corporate customers decided to by a boatload of vista boxes for testing. Maybe somebody counted wrong.
Wake me up when you have the quarterly figures. No, make that semi-annual.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
I use Firefox on OS X, and my main issue is that it doesn't feel like a "proper Mac application". Certain things don't work like every other program.
For example, on single-line text input boxes, a Mac user should be able to hit the up arrow or down arrow to go to the beginning or end of the line. Firefox doesn't behave correctly.
Widgets don't just look wrong; they look like they were pulled off of a Windows machine. And submit buttons are a different size than regular buttons.
In the OS X version of Firefox, the menus aren't Mac-like at all.
Don't get me wrong; I actually prefer Firefox to other browsers. But Firefox has been on the Mac platform since 2003. Within the last four years, the theme has changed several times. Heck, the toolbar icons have changed at least once under each incarnation(Phoenix, Firebird, and Firefox). Within those four years, I would have expected an attempt at making the browser act and look like a proper Mac application, rather than a port from Windows.