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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."
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.
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.
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?
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.
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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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.
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.
The point is that I don't see how a Mac laptop inherently has three more years of life. From what I hear anecdotally the internal hardware is pretty much the same these days. As far as the software goes, my laptop will run Vista adequately if not well, and you could say the same of a three-year-old Apple laptop and Leopard.
"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."
No doubt. It's a given that Vista's use will increase, duh. And when the summery says this:
"[OS X] hit its high point of 6.46% in May, but it slipped back to 6% in June."
What are they implying? That OSX users suddenly abandoned their Macs and switched to Vista or other?
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.
All this REALLY shows is this: drawing conclusions about marketshare by looking at indisputably flawed web browser identification methods, is borderline retarded and at the least, useless.
This sort of story should not be on slashdot, even as a 'look how stupid they are' type thing.
I didn't know Microsoft sold computers? Or is it possible that you're comparing Apple's 4-5% of the COMPUTER market to Microsoft's 90+% of the OS market?
Here's a better comparison for you - MS hasn't entered a new market sector profitably in YEARS, Apple has done so repeatedly.
>Activation is indeed a problem although it's interesting that you explicitly state corp editions when it's a complete non-issue for corp editions and is only a problem for home users. For corp uses you have a central authorization server which you probably already have in the form of SMS. That's a complete non-issue a corp edition of Vista are not tied to the machines which is the whole reason business buy those licenses instead of retail.
I don't want to need anyone's "permission" to use software I bought. PERIOD.
And yes, it's more a matter of principle than any inconvenience suffered.
Well, it would guarantee that much more sales if they just sold unsupported OSX off-the-shelf. I never bought softare, but I'd buy Leopard on the first day at midnight even if I had to queue up two nights before. Because I can't buy a Mac, but I can happily spend 100 on OSX.
... As for supporting PC hardware, it's a) very easy and b) already there anyway. MacOSX supports ATI and nVidia cards, runs on any CPU that has SSE3, supports Intel ICHn chipsets, Via, AMD, nVidia, and there is a very active community happily developing drivers for every piece of hardware that's common enough that someone with the skills to port or write a driver has one.
... I really hope it's here to stay, and that it will dominate, some day. MacOSX is the best desktop Unix hands down... KDE on Linux is close, but there are a lot of things left that could be automated away, I felt it was too much work to keep it working Just Right(tm). Maybe in five more years?
And that's just me. If HP, Asus or anyone sold OSX machines (for the usual price of equivalent Mac minus 50%) they'd be selling so many OSX licenses that it would more than make up for the loss of Mac sales. Apple does not sell enough macs that it would cut that much in their revenue streams
If Steve Jobs wanted to, he could choke Microsoft in a year. The technology is here just now
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