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Vista Use Grows as Mac OS X Stays Flat 387

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the gnashing-of-fanboi-teeth dept.
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."
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Vista Use Grows as Mac OS X Stays Flat More

Vista Use Grows as Mac OS X Stays Flat

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  • Wow, what news, MS outsells Apple! (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 23, 2007 @03:50PM (#19960499)
    What a non news event. Just think, MS outsells OS X. That's news?

    • Vista Numbers Suggest Poor Adoption (Score:5, Interesting)

      by G4from128k ( 686170 ) on Monday July 23, 2007 @04:13PM (#19960885)
      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).

      • Re:Vista Numbers Suggest Poor Adoption (Score:5, Interesting)

        by clodney ( 778910 ) on Monday July 23, 2007 @04:25PM (#19961087)
        I think it is too early to condemn the Vista adoption rate, for the simple fact that very few businesses are going to jump on a new release as soon as it comes out. Vista has only been in full release for 6 months at this point, and the places with the really big user bases are going to be very cautious in their rollout plans. At this point I wouldn't expect the GMs and GEs of the world to either roll it out company wide or even allow it to remain on new units that they bring in the door.

        Give it another year and then I think you can legitimately say that Vista adoption is seriously lagging the growth of the market.
        • 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.

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by WIAKywbfatw ( 307557 )
        Why don't we wait until the first Service Pack has been out for a few months before talking about how good or bad Vista adoption has been?

        I don't know about you, but I'm not shy about telling people that waiting until Vista SP1 has been tried and tested is a prudent move.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by arivanov ( 12034 )
      Well... There is a news item in the graph if you bother to RTFA.

      The (Not Windows + Not Mac) has dropped from more than 5 to around 3% for the period which means that actually the numbers should read:

      Mac on PPC dwindles, but does not convert fully to Mac on Intel. Quite clearly people switch to Winhoze instead.
      Mac on Intel looks like generated from a mix of Linux, BSD, Solaris converts and some conversions from Mac PPC.

      The real losers are actually the desktop Unixes. By far.

  • Very silly statistic! (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Ancient_Hacker ( 751168 ) on Monday July 23, 2007 @03:50PM (#19960503)
    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.
    • 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.

    • Re:Very silly statistic! (Score:4, Insightful)

      by TheRaven64 ( 641858 ) on Monday July 23, 2007 @03:58PM (#19960675) Journal
      Every new OS X user has to switch operating system and computer vendors, while every new Vista user just needs to buy the new version of the operating system that they were using. For this reason, it might not make sense to perform the comparison, since it is much harder to become a new OS X user (especially if you're in one of the large categories of people who get free licenses for MS software).

      On the other hand, the absolute market share figures are still interesting. With Apple selling 15% of new laptops this year, it is slightly surprising that they only have a 6-7% market share.

      • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

        by 644bd346996 ( 1012333 )
        I really doubt that there are lots of people buying boxed upgrades to Vista. What seems more likely is that they are negligible compared to the people who don't know enough to request XP when they buy a new system.

        Also, among potential Mac switchers, it is probably common knowledge that now is not the time to buy. Let's wait until this time next year, after Leopard has started to settle in and more people have gotten frustrated by Vista. We could see a very different picture.

      • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

        by 2nd Post! ( 213333 )
        Surprising that Apple only has 6% to 7%? It was only a couple years ago that Apple hat 3%!
        http://www.macobserver.com/article/2004/01/15.15.s html [macobserver.com]

        In three years they have doubled their share. If they can keep this pace they may be able to hit 10% in another three years.
    • Well the latest market share show that under 5% of all systems sold are Macs.... that means about 94% of all systems sold will be with Windows and with a conservative estimate of 50% of that being with Vista Installed Making a Total Market Share of new system 42% So roughly for every 8 Copies of Vista Reinstalled on each systems is one copy of OS X. The actual results of new systems being sold are probably much higher. So yea Windows Vista Market share will beet Mac OS X. OS X will never beat windows
    • This is basically noted in the article by "Windows overall total has remained flat, ranging between 90.01% and 90.46% through the first six months of the year." So all we're seeing here is the change from XP to Vista.

    • And Windows users buy PCs more often (Score:5, Interesting)

      by blueZ3 ( 744446 ) on Monday July 23, 2007 @04:13PM (#19960871) Homepage
      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.

      • Re:And Windows users buy PCs more often (Score:4, Insightful)

        by shayborg ( 650364 ) on Monday July 23, 2007 @05:34PM (#19961975)

        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.
        I'm not sure about this. My primary machine at home is a 3-year-old Dell Inspiron 700m. It cost me $800 when I bought it — much less than any comparably powered Apple laptop at the time — and is still going strong. The laptop still does all it did three years ago; it browses the Web, plays music and DVDs, burns CDs, and handles some light development work. I upgraded the hard drive and the RAM more than two years ago, but that's because I bought a low end laptop to begin with. You'd do the same with an iBook that shipped with a 30 GB hard drive and 512 MB RAM. All the other hardware is stock and works just as well as it did when I bought it.

        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.

        • Re:And Windows users buy PCs more often (Score:5, Informative)

          by ogminlo ( 941711 ) on Monday July 23, 2007 @07:58PM (#19963567)
          There were indeed price/performance deltas back in the PPC days of the Mac, but with the Intel switch the list prices for Macs compared to Dells have equalized. In fact, a MacBook compared to a similarly-spec'd Dell XPS (the Inspiron line can't spec up to the MacBook) favor the Mac by better than 100 bucks. Actually, the XPS noted here is eerily similar to the Macbook... I'm sure it is just a coincidence.

          MacBook midrange white @ $1,299
          Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger
          2.16GHz Intel Core 2 Duo
          1GB 667 DDR2 SDRAM - 2x512
          120GB Serial ATA @ 5400 rpm
          XGA 1280 by 800 (native) TFT display with built-in iSight
          SuperDrive 8x (DVD±R DL/DVD±RW/CD-RW)

          Dell XPS M1330 white @ $1,474
          Intel Core 2 Duo 2.0GHz/800Mhz FSB, 4MB Cache
          Windows Vista Home Premium Edition
          XGA Standard Display with 2.0 Megapixel Webcam
          1GB Shared Dual Channel DDR2 SDRAM at 667MHz
          120GB SATA Hard Drive (5400RPM)
          CD/DVD burner (DVD+/-RW Drive)

          The Dell has slightly better graphics capability and the Mac has a slight CPU advantage, but the point is the old bunk argument about how expensive Macs are is indeed just bunk. It doesn't matter if PC users chuck their rigs sooner or not- the Macs are less expensive than their brand name PC counterparts nowadays.

    • 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.
      So, you are positing that OS X users never have to upgrade from their current release? Like, ever? And how long will Apple support those older versions and the many bugs that will be exposed in them over time?

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by mbone ( 558574 )
        Mac OS X upgrades are not viewed as that big a deal. I still have the Mac's I bought in 2000 and 2001 in production use (encoding), running 10.4.10. They are a little slow by modern standards but still work just fine.

        I think, though, that he meant upgrade the box, not the OS.

      • I suggest that any mac user that has thought about upgrading their OS in the last six months is probably holding off until later this year when Apple releases a shinny new OS to upgrade to. Unless you bought a new mac, I can't think of a reason why you'd go buy a copy of OS X right now.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Trillan ( 597339 )
        No, I believe what's being pointed out is that Mac OS X is considered one OS, whereas Vista and XP are considered two separate OSes.
    • 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.

      In other news more Mac users upgraded from MacOS 9 to MacOS X, while Windows users didn't bother.

  • What a silly comparison (Score:5, Insightful)

    by EmbeddedJanitor ( 597831 ) on Monday July 23, 2007 @03:50PM (#19960507)
    Vista is new and replaces XP, so obviously Vista will be increasing from near zero upwards.

    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.

  • Misleading sensationalism, as usual (Score:5, Insightful)

    by phozz bare ( 720522 ) on Monday July 23, 2007 @03:50PM (#19960513)
    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.
    • The one good thing about this /. article is that verifies that my Adblock settings are working properly. No Dvoraking for me, thankyouverymuch....

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by mpapet ( 761907 )
      More on this point, somewhere long ago the companies collecting data lumped all sales of the branded systems running Windows and compared them to Apple's sales. If you disaggregated the data one would find:

      1. Apple is consistently top-5 against all other brands sold. It varied from 3-to-5 when I saw the numbers.
      2. #1 in laptop sales in the U.S.

      What would be *far* more interesting to track is the financial performance PC brands like Dell and HP do as Vista ramps up. I predict they will do very badly as mi

    • There is a story here and the Register got it. (Score:5, Interesting)

      by twitter ( 104583 ) on Monday July 23, 2007 @04:14PM (#19960921) Homepage Journal

      We were just talking about how browser stats are useless [slashdot.org]. The only hard use number so far comes from disappointing memory sales [slashdot.org], and M$'s bottom line [slashdot.org] 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 [theregister.co.uk]. 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.

    • Re:Misleading sensationalism, as usual (Score:4, Interesting)

      by smitty97 ( 995791 ) on Monday July 23, 2007 @05:04PM (#19961625)
      If you add up the 3 windows versions, and the 2 mac versions, you get the opposite trend:
      <code>
      Month        XP+2K+Vista        MacOS + Intel
      July,  2006        90.39%        4.29%
      August, 2006        90.72%        4.33%
      September, 2006        90.70%        4.72%
      October, 2006        90.50%        5.21%
      November, 2006        90.52%        5.39%
      December, 2006        90.46%        5.67%
      January, 2007        90.13%        6.22%
      February, 2007        90.01%        6.38%
      March, 2007        90.32%        6.08%
      April, 2007        90.09%        6.21%
      May, 2007        90.07%        6.46%
      June, 2007        90.46%        6.00%
      <code>

  • forced purchases? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by __aapbzv4610 ( 411560 ) on Monday July 23, 2007 @03:50PM (#19960515)
    Could the increase have to do with the fact that you can't really get anything other than Vista on a new PC?

    • 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

    • Re:forced purchases? (Score:5, Informative)

      by delirium of disorder ( 701392 ) on Monday July 23, 2007 @04:24PM (#19961061) Homepage Journal
      you can't really get anything other than Vista on a new PC

      Maybe you just [sun.com] aren't [system76.com] looking [dell.com] hard enough.

      • Re:forced purchases? (Score:4, Insightful)

        by jedidiah ( 1196 ) on Monday July 23, 2007 @04:46PM (#19961349) Homepage
        You cited an overpriced Unix vendor that normal consumers never heard of, a mail order Linux vendor that most Linux users have never heard of (nevermind "normal consumers") and a major vendor that's offering limited support for a small subset of their product.

        If you can't see the problem of paying $5000 for a desktop from someone you've never really heard of before then you're way out of touch with the common man.

        At least the $2000+ Apple desktops benefit from the long track record (for better or worse) that Apple has in consumer computing.

        Sun might as well be LG. Actually, LG would at least be a name people might recognize.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by fermion ( 181285 )
        In general when people say you can' get anything but the latest MS offering, what they are typically saying is that you can't get anything other than the latest MS offering for less than the latest MS offering. If one is talking commercial availability, such people are typically correct. MS, for as much as it's wants it to be different, is the value seller. Even though MS Vista retails for more than XP, much like a Hillfiger shirt, few are willing to pay and therefore the practical cost of MS Vista is ab

  • This is hardly a valid analysis (Score:4, Informative)

    by janrinok ( 846318 ) on Monday July 23, 2007 @03:51PM (#19960523)
    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.

    • 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.

  • Why is this even news? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by damiam ( 409504 ) on Monday July 23, 2007 @03:51PM (#19960525)
    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%.

  • Back to School, Beyotches (Score:5, Funny)

    by water-and-sewer ( 612923 ) on Monday July 23, 2007 @03:51PM (#19960527) Homepage
    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.

  • misleading (Score:4, Interesting)

    by brunascle ( 994197 ) on Monday July 23, 2007 @03:51PM (#19960533)
    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.

  • Gee I wonder why (Score:2, Insightful)

    by grev ( 974855 )
    From TFA

    Likewise, Vista's increases have come at the expense of Windows XP and Windows 2000, both of which have dropped in usage since January.
    Ok, so some XP users upgraded to Vista. Nothing to see here.

  • Naturally (Score:4, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 23, 2007 @03:51PM (#19960543)
    Well sure. Now that Safari is available on Windows, why switch?

  • Apples and Elephants (Score:3, Informative)

    by Llywelyn ( 531070 ) on Monday July 23, 2007 @03:51PM (#19960545) Homepage
    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.

  • If Vista's uptake trend continues... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by BarryJacobsen ( 526926 ) on Monday July 23, 2007 @03:51PM (#19960553) Homepage

    If Vista's uptake trend continues, it should pass Mac OS X in Web usage share by the end of August.
    Why stop at August - in a mere 9 years it will have 110% of the market!

    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.
  • 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
    • Please don't repeat that thing over and over - it's getting old already. Maybe there are websites that reject Safari, but websites that reject Firefox or anything else based on the Gecko HTML engine are so damn stupid they're worth ignoring.

      Come on, Firefox has 15 percent market share among the general internet population and much much more among even halfway tech literate people - if you shut these out, you can shut down your site as well.

      Face it: only the stupidest dork webmasters still shut out Firefox a

  • I call BS (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Xybre ( 527810 ) <fantm_mage@yahoo.com> on Monday July 23, 2007 @03:52PM (#19960569) Homepage
    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?
  • 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 ne
  • 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.

  • So? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by ZachPruckowski ( 918562 ) <zachary.pruckowski@gmail.com> on Monday July 23, 2007 @03:54PM (#19960601)
    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.
  • 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.
    • And I feel that in the next few month you'll find yourself in a new house! How nice!

      I'm sure there's a decent number of raindrops hitting the ocean, but i don't think that they matter much when measuring how much water is already in the ocean..

  • Oops (Score:5, Funny)

    by Thyamine ( 531612 ) <.thyamine. .at. .ofdragons.com.> on Monday July 23, 2007 @03:55PM (#19960621) Homepage Journal
    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.

  • Duh? (Score:2, Insightful)

    by amigabill ( 146897 )
    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.

  • iPhone (Score:2, Interesting)

    by qaz2 ( 36148 )
    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 iPhon
  • 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.
  • 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.
  • Hey! Let's read "news" about the OSes that are remaining static or dropping in the market. Ubuntu probably isn't worth mentioning.
  • 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
  • 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 [toastytech.com].
  • Everyone is putting off upgrading or buying a Mac until leopard appears.

  • Good grief (Score:3, Interesting)

    by JohnnyGTO ( 102952 ) on Monday July 23, 2007 @04:46PM (#19961355) Homepage
    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!)
  • 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.

    • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

      by hey! ( 33014 )
      Damn straight. When I was a newbie I had to go to work in a river of bullshit -- upstream both ways.

      Kids today get all worked up about stepping in a little cowpat. We didn't take any notice of anything until we had to wave our hat over our heads to keep it clean.

      Err... Explains a lot about the way things are today, I guess.

  • So the ACTUAL news is... (Score:5, Funny)

    by kahei ( 466208 ) on Monday July 23, 2007 @04:52PM (#19961463) Homepage
    That vista has not passed MacOS X yet, despite the benefit of being on a huge and much-encouraged upfrade path.

    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 /. 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.

    God this post is embarrassing.

  • 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.

  • who knew? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by toby ( 759 ) * on Monday July 23, 2007 @05:00PM (#19961547) Homepage Journal
    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.

  • Linux share grows 60% from July 2006 to June 2007 (Score:3, Funny)

    by morningstar8 ( 234758 ) * on Monday July 23, 2007 @05:04PM (#19961629)
    The article's headline is no surprise. But also note that the data quoted by the article [hitslink.com] shows that Linux's share of the market increased from 0.44% in July 2006 [hitslink.com] to 0.71% in June 2007 [hitslink.com]. Go Linux!

  • It's also worth noting (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Solr_Flare ( 844465 ) on Monday July 23, 2007 @05:31PM (#19961929)
    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.

  • In other news... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by richardtallent ( 309050 ) on Monday July 23, 2007 @05:45PM (#19962087) Homepage
    ...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.

  • New computer sales and MOLPS (Score:4, Informative)

    by nurb432 ( 527695 ) on Monday July 23, 2007 @07:20PM (#19963203) Homepage Journal
    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 )

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