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Vista Use Grows as Mac OS X Stays Flat
jdelator writes to mention ComputerWorld is reporting that Microsoft's Windows Vista has increased their market share steadily every month while their main opponent, Mac OS X, has remained essentially flat. "According to Net Applications, in June Windows Vista accounted for 4.52% of all systems that browsed the Web, up from January's 0.18%. Vista has grown its usage share each month since its release to consumers Jan. 30, hitting 0.93% in February, 2.04% in March, 3.02% in April and 3.74% in May. Apple Inc.'s Mac OS X, meanwhile, accounted for 6.22% in January and hit its high point of 6.46% in May, but it slipped back to 6% in June. If Vista's uptake trend continues, it should pass Mac OS X in Web usage share by the end of August."
You know, new computers are still sold ...
What a non news event. Just think, MS outsells OS X. That's news?
This is a useless comparison. Vista will grow in share as there are bazillions of consumers that are running older versions of Windows and have a compulsion to "upgrade". Mac OSX doesnt.
yay yess
OSX has been around for a long while now, so it is hard to expect sudden changes.
What would make far more sense would be to compare Vista + XP vs OSX. That would give a far better MS vs OSX comparison.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
I've used to surf web before going sleep from my bed. :)
I do that using iphone now.
What the summary fails to mention is that this growth comes at the expense of XP - not Mac OS - with Windows usage overall remaining constant.
There is, really, nothing to see here. Yawn.
Could the increase have to do with the fact that you can't really get anything other than Vista on a new PC?
Surprise? Relevance? No to both, tbh.
Since when does being a Socialist mean 'someone who has a different opinion than me'?
Of course Vista is increasing its market share. It is starting from a zero and slowly increasing. I would be surprised if anything else happened. And the fact the the Mac isn't growing in usage is also not surprising. They cater for different users. The thing that is worth noting is that Vista is growing more slowly than predicted although it will get there eventually simply because it is on most computers that are being sold. Still, there is nothing here that should be news to a regular /.er.
Have a look at soylentnews.org for a different view
Of course Vista's market share is rising; it just came out and people are forced to upgrade when they buy new machines. Since current Windows marketshare is at least 90%, it would be shocking if Vista didn't eventually account for at least 70%.
It's hard to be religious when certain people are never incinerated by bolts of lightning.
August begins next week, and within three weeks zillions of students will head back to school. A lot of them are eying that tasty "buy a Mac, get a free Ipod Nano" advertisement as I write. I suspect macs will spike soon enough.
Not that I care. I've given up advocating Mac OS X. Let Windows keep its monopoly so all the virus writer's choice remains clear. The rest of us can enjoy an easier existence. It's like going into the mosquito swarm with a fat, naked friend. Go get'em! Have fun downloading your latest virus definition file, suckers.
If this were Usenet, I'd killfile the lot of you.
Sure Vista use is increasing, but that's to be expected.
Just remember most users switching to Vista are probably coming from another version of windows and are therefore only upgrading.
I'm sure a significant portion of new Mac OS X users are also coming from previous windows versions however, so this article doesn't seem all that significant to me...
you cant compare Vista and OS X. you can compare Windows and OS X, or Vista and OS X 10.4 (or whatever the newest one is). the Vista numbers are undoubtably people switching from other Windows versions, not from Mac or Linux, whereas the Mac numbers are people switching to/from Mac in general.
Well sure. Now that Safari is available on Windows, why switch?
These are two separate statistics representing two separate things: Vista adoption vs. "Switchers."
They cannot be directly and meaningfully compared on a month-to-month basis.
Integrate Keynote and LaTeX
This is completely meaningless. What you are seeing is Vista replacing 95/98/NT/2000/XP systems, not Mac systems. What is does tell you is that Vista has a pretty poor adoption so far. But why the comparison with Mac? I guess that's the only way the could make the Vista figures look good.
I'm curious to see how the release of Leopard will change these numbers, I know I'm waiting to buy a mac (replacing my PC, I already have an ibook, not that you care.) until after Leopard.
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Vista is a version of Windows. Mac OS is the operating system in general. Vista's increased market share is probably coming from previous versions of Windows. Comparing Vista vs. Leopard (perhaps relative to general Windows/Mac OS market share) or Mac OS vs. Windows would make sense, but this doesn't seem to.
Of course, this doesn't include OS X users forced to set the user agent as Windows/MSIE to use crappy web sites that reject Safari out of hand
Whats with all the MS/Vista FUD on Slashdot? I mean, I use Windows, Macs, and Linux all the time, and I know Mac and Linux are growing and a lot of people have said screw Vista for a variety of reasons. There have been many articles disproving the "growth" of Vista adoption.
To further skew the results, some users are upgrading from Windows XP, there isn't a new version of OS X out yet, so why would people be upgrading to it? It just doesn't make any sense. MS isn't gaining any new users here, while Linux and Mac obviously are. Whats with the BS?
Eternity is a time bomb.
there hasn't been a new OS X release (Tiger - 10.4) since April 2005?
This isn't, and should be considered as, news. Later in the article, it is suggested that Vista growth is largely cannabalistic from XP, but somehow this is dismissed as a matter of course. Even MORE galling is the suggestion that the powerPC-->Intel switch and the vista switch are analogous, but conversions from PowerPC to Intel do not denote new sales.
read that again. TFA states early on the rate of conversion to Apple's new format, but fails to classify this as growth, only classifying growth as new sales from former Windows users. Ironically, conversion to intel is, prima facia, a new computer purchase, while vista only likely requires a new computer purchase.
Come on. If this were reversed, and an apple fan site showed Windows growth as stagnant because independent adoption of Vista was flat, it would be blatanly obvious.
I was sure that Mac would become the most used operating system, well, most used behind linux anyway. This really makes you think, huh?
Everyone has a comfort zone, and for most people that comfort zone is with Windows, regardless how how different the user experience with Vista is compared to XP. So in spite of all the criticism, if people eventually adopt Vista, isn't that what was more or less expected? I'm sure MS expected a general attitude of "you will use it because we made it," even if users weren't excited about it. Not to mention that Windows is the platform that most developers write software for because of its ubiquity.
Mac users (or would-be users) are waiting for Leopard to be released later this year, which is hurting Mac sales. Vista adoption is continuing at a slow but sure pace.
What's new?
Vista is a new brand while OSX has been around since what, 2000? It's like comparing the Toyota Prius to the VW Beetle.
Any new brand will rapidly increase market share compared to any other long standing one... well except maybe the Zune.
"Enjoy what you're doing! If it becomes drudgery, you're doing it wrong!" - Jim Butterfield
Is anybody at all surprised?
Right now, anybody with a pulse could have predicted this. The consumer OS market is the same as it has been for the past decade or so. The vast majority of PC users use Windows, and will continue to. As their old machines get replaced, they'll have whatever the latest version of Windows is. OS X is going to be used by almost exactly the same number of people who use Macs, that has remained steadily between 4-7% for the past decade, and those numbers will continue to remain the same as long as Apple continued with their high priced, lock-in business model. Linux will continue to remain a marginalized OS used by hobbyists and geeks, and will probably not break 1% of consumer PC usage for the foreseeable future.
Duh.
I don't respond to AC's.
Expecting OS X web use to stay above Vista web use is pretty darn silly. Anyone who wasn't expecting Vista to reach 30-50 percent adoption rates (at the minimum) within 4 years is nuts. So "Vista passing OS X" is not unexpected. Only in the ultimate Mac Fanboys' wet dream would OS X marketshare permenantly exceed Vista marketshare.
Also, "percent of web pages browsed" sucks balls as a statistic, since it only covers select websites, doesn't take into account some blocking and privacy techniques, ignores user-agent spoofing, and assumes everyone browses the web at the same rate of pages/machine/day. Now some of that (not a lot of UA spoofing really, and web-browsing rates are probably similar) is not a huge deal, but some of it (which web pages are covered) really is.
Stop touching yourself.
Windows still holds most of the market. People are still purchasing computers that run Windows, just as others are purchasing Apple computers. If mom and dad buy a new computer, and it runs Vista, are they going to downgrade to XP? Not likely.
The thing is, Windows computers are cheaper. If you're not looking for a Mac, chances are you're just going to find the cheapest computer you can and not care who you buy it from. Over time, that's going to increase the market share of Vista. People are still steadily switching to Mac, though. I doubt we're going to see Apple take the market by storm any time soon, as much as many of us would like to see that happen.
If I only had a moose...
If these numbers are true, for me these are the best statistic for actual Vista growth. I tend not to believe the MS numbers, as I'm sure there is a decent port of people who bought a PC with Vista pre-loaded only to wipe it and put XP on.
Sorry, that bump in May was because I bought my new Macbook Pro for my birthday. Didn't mean to disrupt everything. Move along. This isn't the Macbook you're looking for. Move along.
I will shred my adversaries. Pull their eyes out just enough to turn them towards their mewing, mutilated faces. Illyria
News Flash - XP Usage Declines as OS X usage remains steady.
NOTHING TO SEE HERE
Many here on Slashdot predicted that Vista would'nt sell, just like many did for Windows XP. Empirical evidence that Vista will indeed replace XP settles the question.
"Vista's increases have come at the expense of Windows XP and Windows 2000, both of which have dropped in usage since January."
Duuuuhhhh.
"According to Net Applications, in June Windows Vista accounted for 4.52% of all systems that browsed the Web, up from January's 0.18%."
That would be systems that identify themselves in the http header as Vista increased. Any correlation between the actual number of systems with Vista and the number identifying themselves as such is simply an invention of the makers of the study.
One wonders on any real network analysist using systems that self identify themselves in the wilds of the internet.
It's sad to think about all those people stuck with Vista who will never really know what their brand new computer is actually capable of doing.
4 5/71933/2/)
And us, tech geeks, will still have to listen to the clueless users complaining about spyware, registry hell, and "full memory" problems for years to come.
OS X ftw!
btw, I did see in Computerworld that Apple has tied Gateway for the number of computers sold in the US. aha, here's the link.
(http://cwflyris.computerworld.com/t/1819395/2379
This is inaccurate and contradicts pretty much all expectations and current indications. In fact, 5.6% is an INCREASE. The Mac has gained marketshare. Albeit, it is still a niche player and always wil be as long as Apple is in the premium market.
l es_u_s_mac_market_share_rises_to_5_6_percent_in_q2 .html Mac market share rises to 5.6%
/ 14057/ Predicting great increase in marketshare.
5 6.share.in.us/ Mac marketshare shoots up 26%
For example:
http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/07/07/18/app
http://macdailynews.com/index.php/weblog/comments
Or: http://www.macnn.com/articles/07/07/18/macs.have.
Could it possibly be that Microsoft will soon out-take Apple in terms of who sells more OSes???
Well then how long before it overtakes Linux? In fact could it be that someday Over 95% of all computer will use something that Microsoft wrote?
All joking aside, how can something this obvious and pointless possibly count as news? Everyone here knew that Vista will quickly overtake all alternatives and people will just blindly accept DRM and unexplained connections to DoD computers(never seen proof so not neseccarily true, but heard people claim it happened) as security
Nearly all mac users run OSX. That market is probably saturated. Not all PC users run Vista yet, so there is still a huge market for MS to sell upgrades to.
If Vista grows and OS X is constant the XP is falling. No big news. I'm not forgetting Linux or BSD,
:)
but I doubt anyone using that would ever go back to windows. I wouldn't.
And it wouldn't really have an impact unfortunately.
I would however change my Tiger for a Leopard when it comes out, and add a notebook to boot. Can someone
give me the sites which are being watched; I'll just add some script visiting every one of those
sites with my Linux and OS X machines. Bye bye windows
I also wonder whether the iPhone counts as OS X, and whether a million devices would make an impact
on the statistics.
The link in your sig suggests using the Equation Service. Unfortunately, this is a PowerPC binary, and due to its tight integration with other components won't work with Rosetta. Although it claims to be GPL'd, I can't find the source, and the author does not reply to emails requesting it. Do you have any idea how to run it on Intel Macs?
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
They failed to provide numbers on how Windows XP or 2000 are falling due to new system being purchase that Microsoft is forcing Vista on.
Subtract the OEM numbers and then let's compare Vista growth. I want to know how Vista stacks up with people who have a choice. If all OEM's offered Ubuntu machines and those machines reflected the true price difference, then how does MSFT do?
I don't doubt Vista will turn out to be a pretty good OS. I believe MSFT will sort out the driver issues and some of the early troubles. My question is not if it will be better, my question is whether it's so much better that it justifies the price difference?
My perception is the answer for a lot of people would be, right now at least, no.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
Anyone who runs a major website knows that Apple's actual marketshare continues to flounder down around 2 percent from webbrowsing stats.
Honestly, Apple really should just sell the OS X stuff of to Microsoft or some unix/Linux company and focus on what they really care about, digital music players and phones.
How many people like me, who got Tiger with his Mac, are WAITING for Leopard to come out? How many people are waiting to buy a new Mac to get the new OS? What was the increase of XP vs Win 2000 use just before Vista came out?
That will happen until OS X launches leopard, then we will see an increase on the amount of people browsing, the web, again it wont be a huge number but it wil lincrease the lead. People are afraid to enjoy the internet, because of all the security problems windows vista has... That is my guess...
Nom de dieu de putain de bordel de merde de saloperie de connard d encule de ta mere.
Windows rules the corporate roost, where the average life of a PC is 2-3 years. You also have lots of folks buying a new Windows box when their old one "becomes slow" because of malware. You probably have an average Windows computer lifespan of around three years. Every time a Windows box heads for the landfill (or is donated to a school, re-tooled with a Linux install, etc.) you potentially have another Windows sale.
Macs, on the other hand, tend to be kept a lot longer. There are a good number of folks with 5-6 year old Macs that are still happily using them. Every one of those six-year-old macs means that Apple has 1/2 the OS sales (per user) as Windows.
That's why I'm baffled by the spurrious price comparisons between Macs and Windows PCs. Sure my PowerBook cost 25% more than your Dell. But in three years, when you send your Dell off to laptop heaven (or more likely, if it's Dell, laptop hell) my PowerBook will still have at least three years of useful life left. Making your 25% "savings" actually a loss.
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"Windows overall total has remained flat, ranging between 90.01% and 90.46% through the first six months of the year."
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Just tesying
Lets think about what the Vista penetration SHOULD BE with a very conservative estimate. Assuming that the average person buys a new PC every 4 years (actual stats suggest the refresh rates are faster than this) and gets Vista with a new PC, Vista penetration should be at about 11% right now (and that assumes that NO ONE upgrades and total PC use is flat). If PC penetration is growing (which it is) or former XP users are upgrading (which I assume some are), then we'd expect even higher than 11% penetration by Vista. That Vista penetration is less that 1/3 these expectations suggests that all is not well with this OS launch. These numbers suggest that very very few people have upgraded from XP and that many people buying new PCs are avoiding Vista (confirmed by MSFT's announcement of higher-than expected XP sales into the coming years).
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
That would be systems that identify themselves in the http header as Vista increased. Any correlation between the actual number of systems with Vista and the number identifying themselves as such is simply an invention of the makers of the study.
Your assumption is that a significant number of people change the headers sent by thier browser of choice. Somehow, I seriously doubt that those people are significate in this study.
Apples to Elephants make for great headlines, but is actual apples to apples data more exciting? According to the Article, Mac OS X is flat YTD. Well that's dull...clearly there's something else newsworthy in the article, right?
Vista is +5% YTD!! Fantastic! Amazing! Except that Microsoft as a whole (XP, 2000, Vista) is flat at 90% or so. That's pretty boring, too...
No data on the other 5% of the market, so basically this article's exciting new revelation is that nothing has changed, sharewise, in the computers surfing the net. I actually wish I'd spent my time working rather than reading that tripe...
We were just talking about how browser stats are useless. The only hard use number so far comes from disappointing memory sales, and M$'s bottom line which show Vista is not being used much.
The real story is that the upgrade train is out of steam. M$ introduced both a new OS and a new office suit without a real change their bottom line. Their market is stagnant and will only decline as people get sick of XP and see Vista as even worse. The tipping point has arrived.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Neither Vista nor Office 2007 made a difference to M$'s bottom line. They have nowhere to go but down to the market share their third rate software and bad attitude deserve.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Use of a new operating system is rising! Use of an operating system that's being upgraded within 3 months is flat! Who would have thought that consumers don't like to spend money on technology when they know that a better version at the same price will be available shortly? Seriously though, how many people here bought a copy of XP in the few months before Vista was released? You fail. Try again in 6 months when you can compare two recent releases.
How do you say FLUFF PIECE!!
But I'm going to chime in myself and ask, how is this even remotely newsworthy? OSX has been out for quite a while now, whereas Vista is a new operating system. This ridiculous excuse for reporting is spinning this as if Microsoft is somehow gaining market share, which it isn't. Now, if the combined Vista+XP were gaining share, out of what, Linux? this might be worth talking about. Worthless article, move on, nothing to see.
Now, first, let me say that I think that Slashdot "editors" are really just some dorks with no college education who spend most of their days playing video games. They can't write, and they really can't even spell. That's true.
But in this case, what are you talking about? The headline "Vista Use Grows as Mac OS X Stays Flat" doesn't say that the growth came from OS X. That's what "Stays Flat" means. Meaning it didn't change. So where else could a 5% growth in Vista usage come from? If it's not OSX, then beyond the shadow of a doubt (because there are no other alternatives that have 5% usage by consumers on the desktop), it must be older versions of Windows. Seems pretty clear to me.
I don't respond to AC's.
Does anyone here know anyone who really bought a boxed version of Vista? Just because it seems to me that Vista happens on new PCs and MSDN only.
But seriously, you can't compare the amount of new users to a new system versus an old one. The "applesandoranges" tag is quite appropriately applied to this article.
10 FILL MUG WITH COFFEE
20 DRINK COFFEE
30 GOTO 10
Hey! Let's read "news" about the OSes that are remaining static or dropping in the market. Ubuntu probably isn't worth mentioning.
I hold very few opinions. I hold information based on observation and fact. If you wish to disagree, please use facts.
isn't this a bit pointless in the sense that anyone who knows anything about Macs knows if you just wait a bit longer to buy one then you'll get the upgrade to Leopard for "free" (all new Macs come with a full version of the latest OS)?
I'm waiting until Leopard to get a new Mac, and would expect others to also intentionally NOT buy a new Mac soon. on the other hand, I'm already a Mac user and would not count as growth when I do upgrade (except that I'll then have 2 instead of 1). but I think a lot of people thinking about switching would bear this in mind.
Think about it this way...
The iPhone is increasing in usage while regular cell phone adoption remains virtually flat.
Regular cell phone adoption is ENORMOUS. Probably leaps and bounds beyond just that of the iPhone, but the adoption rate is fairly stable (not accelerating), since there is a long history of increasing adoption of cell phone usage. People pick up new cell phones, now, at a pretty stable rate. But with the hype of the iPhone, compared to its own adoption, the acceleration in its adoption is very sharp.
As in, comparing a statistic who's adoption started out at 0%, and is gradually being adopted at accelerating rate, to one that at the same time had already plateaued (Has a slope of zero, but is still being adopted at a faster rate). OS X is already going at 90 mph, Vista is accelerating to 20 mph. I think MS PR is trying to find a way to spin their embarrassingly low adoption rate in a positive way.
Look at this graph... What feature do we have that is 'more' than OS X?
Why stop at August - in a mere 9 years it will have 110% of the market!
M$ depends on growth to feed it's "restricted" stock compensation plans. Vista adoption is slower than any Windoze version ever. Significantly, it has not made a dent on M$'s bottom line. They have already been losing developers to Google and other competitors based on the failure of their stock options plans - options for $150 when the stock is selling at $25 are kind of insulting.
They are in the non free death spiral. The downward spiral begins with long development time and poor quality, like Vista exhibits. It ends with the realization that M$'s triumph is not self assured. People can and will use other software when the M$ upgrade gravy train is over. Witness the ultimate end, $200 gnu/linux laptops. At that price point there's no room for the M$ tax. The squeeze makes it even more difficult for them to develop product and things just get worse for them.
Their efforts to own free software are a threat, but one that will be vanquished in short order by everyone else who's making good money with honest software. M$ can join the party or die.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
This means there's going to be a lot of people out there making stupid choices, whether this is one of them or not (disclaimer: I don't particularly dislike Vista, and have never had a reason to buy a Macintosh). At least they're not demanding a more user-friendly OS.
technical writing / development
Are these types of articles "influenced". I mean, seriously, anybody who is half way intelligent and interested in technology has likely wandered into an Apple store. That being said, if you take one look at their OS/HW is should at the very least spark some curiosity. Once engague in the UI more curiosity would lead any "real" enthusiast to experimentation. Ergo, if a enthusieast has experience with both OS and is unbiased for the most part, it should be a quite trivial understanding that OSX is much better than windows has ever been and is much more advanced with regard to almost every vector of computing. blahblahblah not as motiated as when i started, yall get the point.
Everyone is putting off upgrading or buying a Mac until leopard appears.
This information does give some value (despite what some posters say about bad comparisons) because what it shows, is that those users who are not going across to vista, are not going to OSX, they are just staying with XP and so are likely to just adopt vista later. This means that although the adoption statistics aren't great for vista, the base of people is not going anywhere so the future of vista looks solid if not quite bright.
I thought it was: 'SWITCHEURS!' Followed by pictures of lame Mac fans cutting themselves/wanking over their iAmGayBook.
Vendors like Dell sell computers with XP. Their business lines pretty much come with XP by default. It's true that "Dell Recommends Vista upgrade" but it's not like they are twisting your hand. I don't think it's all that hard for Joe to find an XP computer nowadays.
The statistics are based on web browser hits ?
Jeez. Is that all they think computers are used for ?
Don't forget that the vast majority of PC sales occur during the Back to School sales as well as the Holiday season sales. Since Vista missed the 2006 Holiday season, the first real sales boom in PC's will be this August-September time frame.
We were all warned a long time ago that MS products sucked, remember the Magic 8 Ball said, "Outlook not so good"
This is comparing Apple and Oranges. Vista a new but Apple's Tiger has been out there for awhile so this is not a correct comparison. They should do that when Apple Leopard is out in October. This comparison is not correct.
This is news? Users on a silo'ed hardware platform, who pretty much have all upgrade to the latest version of OSX and are waiting for the release of Leopard in November aren't running out to buy another copy of Tiger? If I was Microsoft I'd be a bit worried about the numbers considering most current sales of Tiger involve a substantial investment in hardware and an obvious choice in OS philosophy. Where as most sales of Vista involve the loss of an XP user in upgrading and probably not a loss in a Mac user.
Mac fanboy and proud of it (It dual boots Gentoo so phtsssst!)
Si vis pacem, para bellum! For evil to succeed good men need only do nothing!
Seriously. This is about the weakest FUD I've seen in years. If this is the best the windows side has to offer, they're in trouble.
That vista has not passed MacOS X yet, despite the benefit of being on a huge and much-encouraged upfrade path.
/. digging compadres, there is a passed-out ex-girlfreind in my bed who has really only gotten more adorabhle with time, and yet STILL I felt it reasonable to walk over here and point out the obvious. THERE IS SOMETHING WRONG WITH ME.
I'm no anti-MS crusader at all (death to the tyranny of Unix is more my motto) but to be fair, now, that's the real news.
Also I am SO DRUNK you would not believe it. Really, it's disgusting and even a bit scary. To give you some idea I drank a bottle of wine using ond of those 'shooter' things. And that was the start of the evening.
And yet, even *I* can see that Vista uptake, while not disastrous, is notable more for its slowness than for anything else. Maybe it will work out for MS, maybe not, but either way this aricle is bekeeen fearmongering and outright trolling.
Also, and I lie to you not, my
God this post is embarrassing.
Whence? Hence. Whither? Thither.
I guess we can surmise that Macintosh market share of PCs has stabilized at slightly over 6%, and everyone else prefers Windows, with a smattering of Linux and other alternatives thrown in.
Slashdot: Playing Favorites Since 1997
you're trying to dispute the trend with a single data point.
Au contraire, the fine article is trying to establish a trend with a single botched number. I've disputed that number and given you two others, M$'s bottom line and RAM sales, which both make the same point.
Until somebody can show hard numbers indicating that Linux is displacing XP installs at a greater rate than Vista, however, I'm afraid the inevitable Year of Linux will have to be postponed. Again.
As more PC makers start pushing out $200 laptops with gnu/linux installed, you will get the counts you want to see. It looks like the only reason Dell jumped into the Linux market is because it's about to eat everything like it ate the embedded market. The WinTel era is over.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Just maybe MS is a criminal monopoly that uses, hmm, bundling, lock-in, FUD, lobbying (bribes), kickbacks and so on? As a result, the great unwashed has not even heard of OS X, let alone considers it as an alternative.
you had me at #!
We're tracking one OS that was released seven months ago against an OS that's been around a while - and we're tracking month to month Web usage? Not even that, we're tracking month to month incremental PERCENTS in Web usage?
We're supposed to care that OS X slipped POINT 46%? Did they even cite the margin of error?
And where's Linux in this study? Notice the omission.
Anything to tout the Vista that most corporations have said they're gonna wait on buying, right?
Computerworld - the pre-eminent Microsoft shill (when they aren't still shilling mainframes from the 1980's).
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
The article's headline is no surprise. But also note that the data quoted by the article shows that Linux's share of the market increased from 0.44% in July 2006 to 0.71% in June 2007. Go Linux!
That is because people actually want to buy Apple products, but M$ products are forced down most peoples throats.... I am also certainly no brainless apple user, but I will be the first to say that my MacbookPro is substantially better than anything M$ currently has and was well worth the cost I spent on it... Also, combining OSX on intel with VMWare Fusion in unity mode, and you have one damn nice platform to work on.. I would highly recommend it to anyone...
It seems that the register is a Slashbot's very best friend... until they publish something criticizes or just simply FUDs Linux or FOSS, at which point they become "paid M$ shills", and round we go...
When you say "Any correlation between the actual number of systems with Vista and the number identifying themselves as such is simply an invention of the makers of the study."
do you mean "Correlation between installed Vista machines and Vista http headers does not exist"?
If you said yes, please re-read basic statistics 101, basic mathematics 101 and basic common sense 001.
There is *of course* a correlation between *installed* machines of a certain type and machines *identifying* as such. Any other claim is ridiculous given the undisputable fact that machine IDs are not generated randomly upon installation. Even if 90 or 99 percent of Vista users changed their IDs to display "MacOS TWELVE", it would *still* matter in terms of correlation between Vista installations and Vista http-IDs.
Tell me you're just trolling because you know as well as everyone else on this site that the total number of Vista users changing their http IDs are between zero and twenty worldwide and those are probably web developers checking their site's compatibility.
You're comparing people following an UPGRADE PATH to the users of Mac OS X. What the hell sort of comparison is that? Of COURSE the Vista userbase is growing -- people are switching from XP and older Windows systems. No such transition is presently occurring in Mac-land.
Really, I don't get it.
Another way to think of it is "Mac OS X is not going away."
> It seems they are still buying Windows computers though...
Yup, just like they have for the last twenty years. 95% +/- a point or two of new machines sold have been preloaded with whatever Microsoft wants and that isn't likely to change until the Redmond Empire falls. This slow uptake of Vista looks like it is almost entirely being driven by the hardware replacement cycle. Actually this sounds slower than that cycle, makes me wonder just what percentage of new hardware is still being shipped with XP. That should be the headline but the author/publication is obviously a Microsoft Media Whore and they spun it into something positive.
Seriously, ALMOST beating OS X's 6% market share when you are a predatory monopolist who has been cramming Vista down vendor's throats for six+ months now isn't something to be proud of.
Nothing to see here, move along.
Democrat delenda est
When users on slashdot and Digg start calling Vista users sheeple. /until then keep yawning
It's also worth noting that a number of people in the desktop market who are interested in Macs are in a holding pattern right now waiting for the major iMac refresh to hit sometime within the next month or so. Likewise, others are waiting until Leopard's release this October before buying a Mac.
Finally, starting this month through December, Apple is rolling out new mini-apple stores inside of 1/3 of the US's Best Buy stores(over 300 stores in total), which is dramatically going to increase their market exposure. Anyway, I agree, it's silly to compare the two because at no time in the near to foreseeable future is Apple going to post higher marketshare numbers than Windows. That said, I'd expect between this august and the first part of next year to see a steady, if not dramatic, increase in Mac marketshare.
You are who you are, let no one tell you different. But, never close your mind to a new point of view.
Maybe we should compare each new version of the OS within their respective overall market share, so in this case, Vista has been replacing exactly 1% per month of the overall Windows market share (4.5 / 5 = 0.9% per month out of 90%) which in my opinion is quite a slow rate, given that Microsoft has already announced that they will replace Vista in 3 years time, we can project a 36% penetration of all computers by then... (or 40% of all Windows).
On the other hand, how many people will upgrade their Mac to Leopard (OS X 10.5) ? and how many Ubuntu users usually upgrade to the latest version, each released in 6-month cycles ?
This is the same of comparing IE 7 to Firefox 2.0.x which doesn't make sense as absolute numbers are affected by the huge marketing machine that Microsoft is and obviously the fact that the lion's share of Vista users are people who dumbly go to a shop and ask for "a computer"...
In the end, given the fact that more and more gamers are moving to consoles, that OpenOffice will soon become the productivity suite of choice for home users and governmental agencies and that web developers are finally writing W3C compliant code (that is, not customised for a broken industry standard), we might soon see the light at the end of the tunnel.
Can I put a spell on those who can't spell?
Your wheels are loose and they're losing their grip, good you're there.
If you own a relatively successful site that caters to the general public [Alexa] browser stats will reflect the browser and OS usage stats pretty accurately.
Because a large segment of the population is using Firefox and Alexa was an IE only tool that Firefox users would rather do without, I don't think Alexa says anything meaningful. If you define "general public" as "microsoft using public" you could be right.
These are all misleading details. The real story is as the Register got it - Vista made no difference to M$'s bottom line. I'd interpret that as what little marketshare Vista can gain is pure cannibalism. Mac and GNU/Linux incerases are coming from the same pie and their measured sales are up.
Soon $200 GNU/Linux laptops will be all over the place and M$'s stall will turn into an accelerating decline.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Vista is new and replaces XP, so obviously Vista will be increasing from near zero upwards.
No, Vista does not replace XP, neither in a literal nor a practical sense. Microsoft sells both XP and Vista on new computers, many consumers have a choice of one or the other. It would be more accurate to say that Windows 2000, Me, and 98 are being replaced. With respect to the latter two, the remnants of Win9x, hurray. Life is so much better as a Windows developer if you can say Windows 2000 is a minimum.
...sheep outnumber foxes ...followers outnumber leaders ...SUV owners outnumber hybrid owners ...more people voted for major parties in the primaries than third parties ...more people watched a new reality TV show last night than a new special on the History Channel ...more people watched TV last night than picked up a newspaper ...it's easier to paint the kitchen walls than to replace the cabinets, floor, and appliances. ...a $99 OS upgrade is cheaper than a new $1500 computer ...more people buy new computers in at the local big box store than hunt for an Apple dealer or shop online
Sheesh. This is "news" now?
Also, the methodology used for this statistic is telling: "web visitors." The user's OS is becoming so inconsequential that it is measured in terms of people using said operating systems merely to access cross-platform, web-based applications.
Almost 5% of computers are Vista now? That's interesting because I know a lot of people and of those people Vista penetration is 0%. Of those people that are Windows users most of them are afraid of fixing something that isn't broken(XP). Others are going the wait-and-see route to see if it really is more secure and does what it promises.
Microsoft do this "trick" whereby they count all new windows licences sold as being Vista Licences.
You see, even if you want to run XP you now have to buy a Vista licence and convert it.
MS still counts that as a Vista sale and a Vista-installed platform, even if you never install Vista and toss your Vista DVD in the trash.
Its been mentioned on slashdot before that ms will refuse to sell any business an XP license. But you can use your vista license for XP if you need it.
What this means is that vista numbers counted as growth are largly Windows XP installations since ms no longer sells Xp corporate licenses. This was done to skew the numbers to make it look like Vista is growing alot better than it really is.
So your looking at new pc installations vs mac installations pretty much as all count towards a vista sale as well. Also macs last longer than pcs before an upgrade is needed and last many users put off upgrading until Vista came out. Vista does suck on older hardware or if you have older software and components. It sucks alot less and brand new items and peripherals which have support for it.
http://saveie6.com/
Mac OS X users are perfectly happy with 6% of market share. It means that people are less likely to spend resources attempting to develop malware for it. Considering that OS X has been around for several years, it's unsurprising that it isn't growing at the same pace as Vista. It is worth noting that Apple's PC market share grew by 26% last year.
The whole thing is based on brain damage anyway. Growth isn't measurable by percentage of systems in a dynamic market.
For instance, in a given month say there were 100x systems in use, 75x of which ran windows, and 25x of which ran OSX. Next month, there were 200x systems in use, 150x of which run windows, and 50x of which ran OSX. In both cases, using the article's flawed reasoning, windows is 75% and OSX is 25% so there is no growth for either platform; but the fact is that both systems grew 100%, as there are twice as many of both types of systems in use by month two. Both manufacturers and their investors, etc., would have every reason to celebrate.
That's why using percentages of market is a bankrupt strategy to measure product growth in a dynamic market (which PC's certainly are), and always will be. The question is, are there more systems using the product in question now, than there were the last time one looked? If there is, then the product is growing. If not, it isn't. Doesn't have squat to do with shared percentage as measured against another product.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
What do people expect, no growth in MS Vista usage? We got this same kind of worthless "news" when Windows XP shipped, when Windows 2000 shipped, when Windows 95 shipped, and to a lesser degree when the other DOS based Windows, Windows 98, and ME shipped. Microsoft has contracts with all the top OEM vendors, they use various means to pressure these OEMs into loading their latest OS including using financial incentives tied to marketing and likely threats of higher licensing fees among other means. People will take whats pre-loaded and so they are now taking Microsoft Windows Vista instead of the previous version which this time is Microsoft Windows XP. BFD, there's no news in this. IMO.
LoB
"Anyone who stands out in the middle of a road looks like roadkill to me." --Linus
Funny I hear all these comments about how the author is an MS whore the way they're spinning it etc. etc. How about this: XP was the first truly stable home release of their OS, and people finally don't HAVE to upgrade. 95, 98, ME? People were upgrading in hopes of finally hitting something stable. I view this more as a testament to how great XP really has been than Vista being a failure. In the next year or so as more games take advantage of DX10, and some of the other new additions to vista, adoption will obviously pick up.
Since more than hundreds of thousands of PC users with absolutely no choice in the matter will eventually have to use Vista, the market share argument is absolutely meaningless.
Fiat Homos et Pereat Theos
Dell and Walmart's E-machines offer machines WITHOUT OS's (Well FreeDOS), or with a Linux or something that doesn't include a tax to Micros~1. It's most definitely not meaningless.
If Apple does both the above, it would probably make for a nice little uptick in these stats on the Mac side. If they offer Santa Rosa MacBooks and Core2 Duo Minis (fingers x'd) they'll do well. If they can get their head out of their rear ends and release a competitively priced, expandable mid-tower then it could be a significantly larger uptick.
As for Vista stats, who cares? The Ultimate (ooh, ahh) version lasted all of 2 days on my new notebook. Then again, I have outrageous requirements -- I wanted to use my IPSEC VPNs. What a F.P.O.S!
The http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_os.asp site paints a much different picture with Vista sales not growing very fast at all and OS X and Linux still beating Vista sales.
How do you know that Vista use grows? How do you know Mac OS X is staying the same?
Well, this is pretty easy to understand.
1 - New pcs come with vista, more pcs are sold then mac.
2 - molp holders need to start upgrading per their agreement. ( and even if they havent yet, when they renew its considerd a 'vista sale' on microsofts books )
---- Booth was a patriot ----
yawn stories, just love 'em, and the stats are based on web browsing? OFFS! A new MacOSX release is coming in October, so there will be a bump in the stats then. There has already been an admission that Vista isn't selling as fast as MS wanted, and that XP sales are just fine.
There was an unknown error in the submission.
Stupid Louisiana Brain Deathers pretending to be stupid people...
DIE.
Obviously your "major web site" doesn't sell things like gay sex toys, or brushed metal hand mirrors with pearl white handles. If it did, your stats would look much different.
I've never understood the logic behind this FOSSie anti-MS FUD whine. Is installing an operating system really SO difficult that you can't buy any machine and install teh Lunix on it?
Part of the REAL problem is that Lunix can hardly install properly. It's extremely tempermental on what will/will not work, and Lunix does a horrible job of auto-detecting and auto-installing hardware. And adding in NEW hardware? Forget about it: teh Lunix is so far behind Windows 95 it's scary.
So FOSSies, rather than focusing on not being able to buy teh Lunix pre-installed (which honestly doesn't matter), why don't you focus on getting the Lunix hardware installation and configuration routines working?
It's not Microsoft's fault your operating system sucks.
Stop the spread! Save the free internet!
This means that, months after initial release, Vista users are finally starting to figure out how to access the web from their computers.
licet differant, aequabitur
My MacBook doesn't get here until Friday.
That 3-year-old PowerBook won't have such magnificent future-proofing once x86-only 10.5 rolls out.
Don't know if you have any interest in getting Leopard for it though. Just saying.
Perl, n. A language spoken by Eskimos.
Computers with Windows are everywhere.
So are cockroaches.
I agree with the post about the comparison between MacOS and Vista being 'silly', but, as a technology vendor, I'm certainly interested in the opportunity presented by Vista. Product and service providers and even employees should be interested. IDC recently updated their forecast for Vista sales and expect over 150 copies to be in use by the end of next year.
According the IDC report (Wednesday, July 18, 2007):
"Apple's U.S. Mac market share rises to 5.6 percent in Q2
U.S. shipments of Apple's Mac computer line grew 26 percent during the second quarter of 2007, according to just released data from market research firm IDC."
Maybe I'm biased, but the IDC report seems a little more objective, to me. Saying that apple market share is flat because internet usuage statistics seems like an odd way to count.
Not that I had too much expectation towards Vista as I am a linux user for 12+ years, but I was curious.
,,,...
....
I am tired of my 5x upgraded Debian is crashing on me (just Xorg), and faced Vista running on a relative's brand new Compaq laptop like NT did on a 386 (LIKE CRAP)
So I realized, that I need a Unix machine and I want something that works without compiling every single thing and with strong commercial support... + a compact size but full featured laptop
So I got a macbook, and since OS/2 this is my best computer (HW+SW) I got....
And you know what ? A lot of my tech friends go that way, and the ones that do not, replace Vista with XP after a few weeks....
SO whereever the data comes from, it does not count tech people, or is just bogus.
I haven't met one single person who liked Vista for any reason.... just haven't met anyone.....
And whe even my wife (osc user, linux user for 3 years) says huhh, that is slow, then you know what I mean.
The article appears to focus on the growth of Vista. Nothing indicates this growth is at the expense of OS X. In fact, the title itself says that OS X is staying flat.
Focusing on who's expense this growth is at would be a more interesting article. Most likely, the rise in Vista is coming at the expense of XP -- not Linux, and not Mac. Still, it may be. Ignore the red herring about the growth of Vista unless it is compared to meaningful data in a relative way.
I'd honestly almost expect Merriam Webster to include a reference to Apple in their definition of the word "fringe."
Apple as a company, and their userbase, are and always have been the computing world's answer to the Addams family. They don't produce computers or an operating system of the kind that normal people are willing to use; this has been shown time and time and time again.
If you're a neurological, social, and/or genetic aberration who also happens to have an above average amount of money at your disposal, then congratulations...you're part of Apple's traditional target demographic. The rest of us will just keep doing what we've always done; using Windows, while Linux and the MacOS remain in the outer limits, where they've proven they belong.
The thing that makes me really angry, grieved, and frustrated is that in the case of Linux in particular, it didn't have to be that way, and indeed for a long time, I didn't think it was going to. I thought Linux was going to become truly mainstream. Alas, at the proverbial eleventh hour, when it was right on the edge, the traditional legion of basement-dwelling freaks somehow managed to re-assert their predominance, when I'd almost allowed myself to dare to hope that the system had somehow managed to pull free of them.
The Mac has always been fringe, and I've never expected or wanted anything better for Apple. With Linux, though, things were different...for a time, it looked as though the proverbial critical mass was genuinely in sight. You blew it...and when I say that, the people who I'm talking to know, deep down, who they are.
The amount of Win XP surfers is decreasing by 4.52% while Mac OS9 surfers stay constant - clearly showing the meteoric rise of OS9!
...and OS X will grow!
I guess we should all be shocked into dumping our Macs! Good heavens. Most of the world uses non-Apple PCs, Windows runs on them, most come pre-installed with Windows, and Microsoft has pulled XP off the market. Vista's the only thing going, unless you want to switch to Linux, and people heavily invested in Windows software won't see Linux as a practical alternative. Apple sure isn't going to license OS X. I guess it was a slow news day for whoever thought the the creeping increase in Vista sales was newsworthy. What is newsworthy is how slowly and reluctantly Vista is spreading. If XP were still being offered for sale, Vista sales would likely be stagnant. Yawn.
I am shocked, I tell you. I am going to sell my two Macs right away, my Adobe suite is going up on ebay, and I will write a written apology to BillG for ever having doubted him.
But seriously, WTF? Vista is sold with new PCs, so it's sort of obvious that its market share will grow, as the Windows market is far bigger than the Mac market. Having said that, BillG must be really, totally unhappy that Vista is now, some 6 months after release, still below 10% of the total marketshare, because that means it's also below 10% of the Windows marketshare, which is far more interesting news. At the current rate, it means that about one year after release, Vista will only have about 12% marketshare, or thereabouts.
And that doesn't surprise me at all. Microsoft's extortionate pricing on upgrade prices means it's cheaper to buy a new PC than upgrade your old one, and while some people will do just that, most normal people will just wait.
P.S. Scuttlemonkey, you brainless cunt, this post is as much flamebait as some Mac fanboy article praising Steve Jobs' hemaroids for their good design.
Vista has increased their market share steadily every month while their main opponent, Mac OS X
This is dead wrong. The main competitor of Windows Vista is Windows XP, at least in the corporate business
...I mean, uptake of that amongst OSX users is going to be huge, so by the logic of TFA, windows is toast. Oh, wait...
(PS - hint to Apple - choose an OS name that people can spell unless you want it to be known as "leppard").
In a survey of 100 programmers, 111111 thought that duck-typing was a good idea.
I KNEW this thread would be funny to read - I mean, it's like a troll post to see how many M$ bashers can post before the thread breaks. Really wish slashdoters were a bit more objective..but alas...
If this article said the opposite, you'd all be cheering instead of figuring out ways to make it irrelevant or disprove it.
Tell me I'm wrong.
Too funny.
The number of people going to see the new "Harry Potter" movie continues to rise, while the viewership of "The Lord of the Rings" stays flat.
Take care,
Mark
There is a solution...
Want objectivity? Okay, since you asked. Please refer to the many links in this post.
e nts/idc_apple_mac_grabbed_56_of_us_market_share_in _q2_07/
/ 14313/s p
h tml?articleID=201200157
Also, if anything is a "troll" it's the original article. Drawing Conclusions about OS sales based on browser stats is idiotic - if not dishonest. And the methodology used is even more idiotic - or more dishonest.
Please note: this IDC data is for product shipments, the article is about browser stats. Which would you trust more?
The charts for the IDC data can be found here:
http://www.macdailynews.com/index.php/weblog/comm
More links for the IDC report.
http://macdailynews.com/index.php/weblog/comments
http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1895,2160333,00.a
Or since you have $4500 in spare change, go buy the real thing: http://www.idc.com/getdoc.jsp?containerId=207308
Or maybe this article is a well timed bit of smoke screen, designed to try to hide: "Microsoft Xbox 360 Sales Plunge 60% As Problems Mount"
http://www.informationweek.com/news/showArticle.j
I recently got a Vista laptop for my 79 year old father (Yeah, Dad rocks!). Unfortunately, he's an AOL lover, and soon after he installed AOL 9.0, the laptop started hanging during the boot cycle. After pursuing a number of frustrating avenues, we wiped Vista, installed XP, and his laptop has run just fine (and a lot faster) ever since. My niece also absolutely hated Vista on her new computer, deleted it, installed XP and is now much happier. You've got to really dislike an OS to go to the trouble of replacing it! I wonder how many others have done the same?
One of the versions has "Go Faster Stripes" on it??? Well I was waiting to upgrade but now I'm going to rush out and pick up a copy ASAP. Thank you for the advice.
I haven't RTFA, but the impression I got, and the message I took away from this, was about switchers/new adopters. The point is no that there are more systems in use - that is an absolute given since both the global population and comuter-using percentage of the population are increasing. The point is one of marketshare. If Windows' percentage overall grows and OS X's doesn't (or not as much) then the truth is that MS is (re)gaining the upper hand. It really doesn't matter how many machines Apple sold as an absolute number.
Mind you, I don't see any sign of Apple going away, and I believe they will remain above 5% for the forseeable future. That said, if their competitors continue increasing marketshare, it will put a real squeeze on Apple because, leaving aside the fanboys, people make buying decisions based on things like low cost, high visibility, and product quality. Right now, Apple is doing great in those areas (well, less poorly than usual in the first) and that is largely because they have been able to scale up production so much (faster than the market itself is growing, thus leading to increased marketshare). If they can't keep growing, though, they cannot continue dropping prices relative to their competition and may be forced to choose between low costs and high profit margins to sustain R and D.
There's another problem with losing marketshare even if sales are good for the time being: loss of mindshare. The computer industry is not yet saturated, so Apple has a decent chance right now to increase marketshare just by pulling in new people (as opposed to switchers from other platforms). It's noticeable; I'm seeing FAR more Apple computers than I ever have before, and there enough older-model Macs (now that people are upgrading) that some of my friends who can't afford new ones are buying the older computers (this also increases marketshare, since the only new computer bought is the new Mac for the upgrader). BUT... what if Apple started losing marketshare again? What if, even though they continued to sell well by Apple's past standards, Vista or Linux or whatever else started really sweeping up the new users? Eventually, Macs would once again become elusive and out of the public mind.
My point in all this is simply that the math isn't bad, it's just not the numbers you were trying to find. You want to see sales as absolutes, or relative to past performance (growth). Instead, TFA is giving you marketshare across current competitors, compared to marketshare in the past. To put it another way, it's your math that is bad; the summary, at least, isn't even talking about growth, it's talking about ratios - but if you look at it in terms of growth, Apple is growing less than its competitors, so in the race to saturate the market, it is losing ground.
There's no place I could be, since I've found Serenity...
Oh how the M$ party is over.
You PR tolls better start looking for another job. Your best efforts have done more harm than good and your owner is about to run out of money.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
So in another couple of months at that rate the number of Windows Vista systems being used to browse the web will exceed the number of Windows 98 systems, but it'll be at least a couple of years before it comes close to the number of Windows XP systems.
There are two obvious questions. First, why is this surprising and second, why are we comparing to Mac OS X numbers as if they're even vaguely relevant?
Cut that out, or I will ship you to Norilsk in a box.