Apple – Going nowhere and fast.

Also Linux people who think this is THE year for linux, please STFU. You’ve been saying the samething for 20 years “THIS IS THE YEAR FOR LINUX!!! OMFG!!!! YES!!!!” No linux is going to be dealing with scraps of the OS industry, as usual.

I think the only other chance Linux had to rule a segment was in “equipment”. But being open source it was hard to make money on linux stuff so no one developed software for it and evolved it. So Windows once again rules the embedded OS’s on industrial equipment and hospitals and retail and airports and too many other to list. Even WinCE rules handheld equipment…another sector that Linux’s low footprint “would have” given it a good chance. But as with anything that’s “hard to make money off of”, not many want to take it seriously.

E,

I find the polling information interesting, and I don’t mind looking at US (and then global) share. However, I sometimes wonder about just using retail. It’s great of course to show how incredibly successful Apple’s retail stores are. But it’s not the primary model Dell and HP use, so it’s kind of an Apples to Oranges comparison. I mean, even if they get 30% of US retail they’ll still likely be third in the US.

Techslacker,

“All I know is I don’t need Apple to have a 30% marketshare to enjoy owning and using my Macs.”

Amen to that. At some point, Apple may get enough share that it’s actually a hindrance (in terms of support obligations, etc.). On the other hand, to do that they’d need to implement some of the silly things analysts want them to do (cheap macs, license OS X, an iPhone nano, etc.), and I don’t see them going there.

Tobin,

“Mac is good for Mac stuff (art/school crowd mostly). Windows is good for everything else (work, games, etc). This isn’t changing any time soon. For every Mac software title out there, there are 20+ Windows titles.”

Oh please. 1989 called. It wants it’s silly Mac excuses back.

Druid Dude,

“Macs will not get 30%. The reasons? Recession and price.”

You could very well be right. Honestly, I don’t think anyone knows what the economy is doing to Xmas shopping. While Black Friday was not a boon over last year, analysts had to fall all over themselves — and go out of their way — to explain why the numbers were much “worse” than they looked. And most of them had to admit that Apple’s weren’t bad.

Ron Johnson:

“Linux is barely relevant statistically at 0.83 percent – that’s less than the 1.95% for “Other”. I have to say, that surprises me.”

Why? I ran Linux a while back, but I’m a bit of a geek. Being free doesn’t mean anything to the vast majority of people when you get an OS with your PC anyway.

dusanmal,

“Few crucial problems with the methodology:”

You brought up good points, and I could bring up more. The fact is, as I’ve said in the past, this is not a particularly exact method of calculating OS share (nor browser share, which is another data point they provide). Still, if the methodology stays the same from year to year, and you gather and use it for historical purposes, then the trends it reveals are interesting.

Francis,

The numbers I used in the article do NOT include the iPhone/iPod touch. The data is available, and I would maybe have included it if I also had the Windows Mobile numbers, but the latter are not provided. For the record, Mobile OS X was closing in on .4%.

W,

“Looks like all the stuff being touted by Apple is pretty false. Vista adoption has been much much greater than Mac adoption.”

I don’t recall Apple saying Vista adoption was slower than Mac adoption. They (and everyone else) have said that Vista adoption was SLOW, but even at that rate it was only a short matter of time before the number of clients sold would exceed all Macs in existence. In fact, I seem to remember Microsoft trumpeting when this “event” occurred.

I would like to comment on your 3 points:
1)The majority of advanced users use Windows. There will be a very small MS bias in this survey due to advanced users blocking cookies.

2)I disagree with this. It may be true that an average Linux user is more picky with their surfing than the average Windows user, but I don’t think it will have any significant effect on this.

3)Millions of Windows computers have little or no web access in workplaces. I would say that Mac has a bias in this area as the Mac demographic is younger and more likely to spend a lot of time surfing the web than large sections of PC and Linux users.

Also, Windows computers are more likely to be used by multiple users (e.g. family computer or shared work PC). This means that every Windows PC counted represents on average more actual users than every Mac and Linux computer counted.

I am not going to make any predictions about market share, but I can tell you that since I bought two Macs this year, I have two friends that have purchased Macs to replace their PCs after only having them for one year and 8 months. Both of these users were frustrated by Vista and they know how happy I have been with my Macbook.

Windows doesn’t have much to worry about though. Even with the explosion of the iphone and the popularity of the mac line, they have yet to crack 10%. As long as OSX can only be legally installed and run on 1 platform they will never break the barrier. Windows is leading the way because they are entrenched in the business world, entrenched in the gaming world, run on a multitude of hardware configs and (here’s the kicker…) you can find and install a pirated copy of not only the OS but it’s software anytime you want.

Working within the tech side of banking system I can tell you there’s isn’t an Apple machine in site. It’s all embedded linux, windows & IBM Os2 on the servers and terminals and Windows on the main desktops.

I think Apple is happy where they are. They own the consumer device market in the US… frankly I don’t think they’d want to deal with challenges of getting much bigger.

Google buys webmasters by giving Google Analytics away for free, in return collecting all the privacy data from visitors and building huge profiles of all of you.

Please welcome our new big brother.

It’s a fantastic alternative for a number of reasons. (1) It’s FREE!!!! (2) It’s community supported so improvements come much more quickly (3) It’s more secure. Since creators of malware want the most bang for their buck, they write malware that targets 85% of the world’s computers, which are Windows-based machines. Also, the security architecture of Linux (requiring Root/Admin privileges to make system changes) prevents most problems. (4) It’s VERY lightweight. What I mean is that most Linux distros with run flawlessly on older hardware. Say for instance you have a 5-year old desktop with 512MB or RAM and a slower processor. You cannot run Mac OS because it’s not a Mac. You cannot run Vista because your hardware is way to slow, and your hard drive is probably too small. You could run XP, but Microsoft has phased out this OS, and since most of their developers are focused on Vista and the new Windows 7, security patches will soon become non-existent. Since XP still has an overwhelming marketshare, it will be the bulls-eye for viruses and other malware for years to come.

Linux is certainly not for everyone yet. To get the most out of it, there is still some manipulation needed. But you don’t need to be an expert either.

1) It relies on people tracked by javascript/cookie method. Majority of advanced users will not be tracked. Majority of those users are more tech-savvy and likely to use other-than-Windows OS. Bias toward MS.

2) It relies on set of websites “evil enough” to staple tracking cookies to their visitors. There are plenty of people who would not come back to the site if they found that they are tracked like that. I personally quit patronage of some very good businesses after the googleanalytics appeared on their checkouts… Again, advanced users are likely missed, not the MS. Bias toward MS.

3) Finally, it relies on web-traffic. This particularly hurts Linux (and to some extent Mac). Many Linux systems are highly specialized and users rarely use them for browsing (ex. school systems) and some of Macs are like that too (say AV production,…). Again pro-MS bias.

Apple does not need this. If anything, being #1 sucks because then everyone wants to take you down, and everyone does like to take Apple down. It also brings more scrutiny on Apple’s often monopolistic tendencies.

As for what Tobin says, 20-1? No way. Maybe 3-1. There are approximately 20,000 applications available for Mac OS X. There are certainly not over 100,000 applications for the PC. That would put it at 5-1. As I said, it is more like 3-1. And from being a developer, on both platforms, for years, and buying software for both, for years, I can tell you that much of the software for the PC is really bad…

As I said, meet you all back here when the figures come out…