RobertB-DC's Journal: Ghost Article: Mac OS X Market Share Declining?

Ghosts of Slashdot: 10/02/2006
[Halloween month begins with a ghost sighting. Sucks that I don't know enough about the Mac world to know why it was banished. Maybe another editor saw "A research conducted by..." and reflexively hit the "kill" button. Update: Yaz found the original article from two weeks ago -- it's a dupe after all. Good catch by somebody in the Mac world. And as Kalak noted, it leaned towards the FUD side anyway.]

Mac OS X Market Share Declining?
Posted by CmdrTaco in The Mysterious Future!
from the more-for-me dept.

tommm writes

"A research conducted by Net Applications suggests that Mac OS X market share has declined compared to last year. From the article: "With the way things are going, is that even possible? Well, according to Net Applications, it sure is. While OS X appeared to be having a small increase in usage during the later part of last year, the numbers show that OS X market share fell from 4.35 percent in December 2005 to 4.33 percent in August 2006, and that figure includes the usage of Mac Intel machines. If you subtracted the increase in that area, then you'd actually be left with a lower number that would sit right at 3.71 percent."

What are the Ghosts of Slashdot?
As a Slashdot Subscriber, I get to see stories before they're posted to the general public. This means that I get to see the mistakes -- the articles that almost made it, but got sent to the cutting room floor at the last minute. They become the Ghosts of Slashdot, a URL that points to nothing.

Note that this is NOT the same as whining about article submissions that didn't get accepted! These stories were accepted, posted for subscribers, and then pulled from the site. Their brief existence gives us a glimpse into the Slashdot post-submission process, for those who are interested in what's going on behind the curtain.

By the way, any Subscriber can join the Ghost Hunt, but so far only morcheeba has shown the requisite sensitivity to ectoplasmic vibrations.

Tone of the artice?

[Kalak]

Aside form the tone of the article, which sounds like a lot of FUD, I can't see why it was pulled, based on the numbers they quoted. Fact checking his numbers may prove that they're wrong is one idea (I haven't done it, so they may be right). If someone caught that shortly after it was living, that may explain the ghost.

The numbers seem like they may be of interest so, if they're right, I can't really see why pull it.

Dupe

[Yaztromo]

It was most probably pulled because of this [slashdot.org].

Yaz.