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."

Wow, what news, MS outsells Apple!

[Anonymous Coward]

What a non news event. Just think, MS outsells OS X. That's news?

Very silly statistic!

[Ancient_Hacker]

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.

What a silly comparison

[EmbeddedJanitor]

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

[phozz bare]

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.

forced purchases?

[__aapbzv4610]

Could the increase have to do with the fact that you can't really get anything other than Vista on a new PC?

Why is this even news?

[damiam]

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%.

Gee I wonder why

[grev]

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.

Meaningless

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

If Vista's uptake trend continues...

[BarryJacobsen]

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.

Isn't this a bit of a stupid comparison?

[JeremyBanks]

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.

I call BS

[Xybre]

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?

So?

[ZachPruckowski]

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.

Re:Very silly statistic!

[TheRaven64]

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.

Duh?

[amigabill]

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.

Re:What a silly comparison

[ILikeRed]

I think it is pretty telling that with 90% market share, Microsoft is having problems pushing their new OS on their current customers [yahoo.com] - even generally uneducated ones that for one reason or another are buying new computers but going through the trouble to stick with Windows XP [theregister.co.uk].

Microsoft need not worry about OS X, they need to worry about Windows ME all over again. Maybe users don't like DRM, spyware, and inequitable licensing terms after all, but I suspect Microsoft will end up blaming multiple versions confusing their ignorant customers.

Re:Bad study: systems identifying themselves as vi

[plague3106]

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.

I'm sure this has already been said...

[immcintosh]

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.

Re:Vista Numbers Suggest Poor Adoption

[WIAKywbfatw]

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:FP?

[HermMunster]

And XP sales are noticeably higher than expected. And being a monopoly you'd expect Vista to grow marketshare as old hardware is discontinued and new hardware is purchased. But Vista is a misery to all as it is a DRM and spyware nightmare.

Re:forced purchases?

[jedidiah]

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:forced purchases?

[Anonymous Coward]

No-one's "forced" to buy anything.

Re:forced? more like encouraged

[walt-sjc]

In order to continue to be able to buy OEM licenses at rock bottom prices (and therefore compete in the market,) Dell has NO CHOICE but to "recommend" Vista. Do their Tech people "recommend" it? Nope - just Marketing.

That said, you are 100% correct that it's EASY to buy a XP loaded Dell. XP is a standard option.
The same is NOT the case at the local Bad Buy, Officemax, etc. where the only option is Vista, preloaded on all machines.

who knew?

[toby]

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.

Re:Vista Numbers Suggest Poor Adoption

[Anonymous Coward]

First off, we're all getting Vista rammed down our throats. Wouldn't be a problem if it didn't cause even our fastest machines to beg for mercy. Its performance is horrible. Period.

Big OEMs were outright refusing to include OEM XP with their systems. Then they caved. But even if you get no OS, you still have to pay for Vista. (None-installed is not the same as not paying for it.) You have no choice with the low-end machines, for example -- It's Vista Basic or build your own machine. Microsoft is killing XP support, and every volume license sold is Vista, you just have to register the license and use your downgrade rights.

Figures promoted by Microsoft are not trustworthy, and they're insulated from the actual market. Eventually it will take over, because there are no other choices allowed in the OEM market.

It's also worth noting

[Solr_Flare]

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.

Re:And Windows users buy PCs more often

[shayborg]

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.

In other news...

[richardtallent]

...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.

Re:Nothing to see here....

[Anonymous Coward]

"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?

Math challenged FA

[fyngyrz]

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.

Re:Very silly statistic!

[fyngyrz]

I run windows from time to time... but I run it in a sandbox on my Mac. Linux too. So every time someone counts my windows or my linux, it's really counting a Mac anyway. :-)

Re:Vista Numbers Suggest Poor Adoption

[Vancorps]

Your posts interests me for some reason. Perhaps it's the blatant use of trolledness.

What draconian DRM are you referring to? I place a CD in my Vista box and it plays just fine, I can rip it to whatever format I like with nothing in my way. Now if I bought a CD with DRM on it then Vista will honor it. This makes sense to me given that consumers that don't care about DRM would then be allowed to do what they want and those of us that do care will choose not to buy DRM media. The added crap only runs if you're using DRM media so there's no problems if you're not.

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.

Spyware, finally, something that at least has a hint of reality although easily filtered through an ISA server or most any proxy. If the proxy is transparent then the end-user won't even notice. A bad move and in my mind a sound reason for disliking Vista. That is definitely something MS should not have added to the OS.

I'm not sure what other cruft you're referring to or what you're particular problems are with the EULA. You are unlikely to want to virtualize the home versions or any of the light versions of Vista since the majority of Vista users out there are using more expensive premium versions. It's a stupid caveat for MS to have added and only serves to cut out the cheapskates from becoming customers but perhaps MS doesn't want cheapskate customers anymore perhaps because a lot of them are moving to Linux already.

Lastly, depending on the size and nature of the business just because users are happy with an OS doesn't mean that a newer OS won't give you the administrator a better ability to give users a unified desktop keeping users familiar with their surroundings and making it easier to deploy en masse. Plus there are other advanced shadow copy services which integrate with DPM natively to allow for versioning on your file server of whatever documents you wish whether they be ODF or xlsx.

Now of course not everyone needs to upgrades and most of course not everyone benefits from it. You however don't seem to be well educated in what Vista offers business users. Of course you might have perhaps just wanted a short post with a few quick jabs here and there. There are lots of reasons to dislike Vista just like lots of reasons to dislike any OS. You might want to pick things that are actually problems though. Memory management, footprint, processing power, broken legacy applications. Those are real reasons to dislike Vista. Of course per-user computer settings in group policy is mighty nice along with an image based install making hardware independent install images a snap are two reasons off the top of my head to like it. Of course there is also the improved shadow copy services, advanced auditing abilities, ease of compliance certification, complete administrative control over the desktop environment are just a few others.

I won't be deploying Vista anytime soon largely because of the hardware requirements. During the next lease refresh I'll surely consider it though weighing the good and bad for the company I work for and deciding accordingly. That probably won't be until next year though.

Re:Nothing to see here....

[mrsteveman1]

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.

Re:Nothing to see here....

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Vista Numbers Suggest Poor Adoption

[ZorinLynx]

>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.

Re:Nothing to see here....

[Corwn of Amber]

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.

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 ... 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.

If Steve Jobs wanted to, he could choke Microsoft in a year. The technology is here just now ... 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?

Re:For the sake of nitpicking

[SuperMog2002]

Except 10.5 isn't x86 only. The minimum spec is an 800 MHz G4.

Re:Nothing to see here....

[Corwn of Amber]

Poeple would switch. Everyone whose needs don't include legacy custom software will, really. That means "everyone who uses Adobe CS, MS Office, Pro Tools and Final Cut" - that's a lot more small corps and independent jobs than you seem to account for. If all these market segments could buy OSX (all those not rich enough to buy a Mac), it would eat a large part of MS Windows' marketshare. Same thing for home users - they don't use custom software at all (else they're not home users, but hobbyist or professional developpers).

Now if it would run games...