Vista and Mac OSX increase user base, Linux slips
By Jonathan Schlaffer
Windows Vista and Mac OSX continue to slug it out and while Microsoft and Apple will attempt to lure people to their respective operating systems, both have managed to increase market share.
Vista is taking market share from Windows XP and Apple is taking perspective Vista customers away from Microsoft. Microsoft should be happy that Vista is replacing XP; after all, that is what it wants. It does not want users to switch to Mac, which is happening and if Microsoft doesn’t start producing higher quality products, there will only be more of the same in the future.
Both Vista and Mac OSX are taking users away from Linux. By the end of May, Vista accounted for just fewer than 4% of all operating systems in use, Mac OSX Tiger accounted for nearly 7% including both PowerPC and Intel versions.
In an article at Computer World, Windows 2000 and XP were found to have less but still a majority market share and the losses were almost exclusively to Vista or Mac OSX Tiger. Linux fell into the typical (and very miniscule) “other†category, its percentage was not considered.
In the browser wars category, Firefox lost almost an entire percentage point to Internet Explorer 7, mostly due to the expansion of Vista since it comes preinstalled with IE7 but is also available for Windows XP as an option.
Now that Apple has released Safari for Windows, anything is possible even if it is full of bugs, crashes and blue screens. Let’s just say that Safari for Windows needs a lot of work.
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June 18th, 2007
Actually Linux has a greater Desktop Market Share than Mac does.
June 18th, 2007
Jim, you’re dead wrong on that one. Linux is doing well on servers, but is a no show on the desktop. Pretty much all data puts Linux at around 1% on the desktop, and most of those users it has been found STILL run Windows or Mac on their other PCs.
Hans
June 18th, 2007
Its possible that the stuff I read was just for europe or the UK then. I think Macs are probably more popular in the US.
June 18th, 2007
Vista is pimpin…
Macs are for people 55+
and they will all die soon.
I say good riddance.
June 19th, 2007
[…] Full article here: Source […]
June 19th, 2007
OS X is swank
Macs are for anybody
and Apple is shipping more of them than it ever has.
I say rock on!
June 20th, 2007
Mac OSX may be a great operating system, but I’ll never no since I build my own machines and Apple won’t let me install it!
There is absolutely nothing to distinguish the Mac on the hardware front anymore, so I find it appalling that Apple insists you buy their machines to use an OS that should function on any intel based machine. Hell, it should work on AMD as well! Give users a choice!
June 20th, 2007
Apple has nowhere to go but up.
June 20th, 2007
“Vista is taking market share from Windows XP and Apple is taking perspective Vista customers away from Microsoft. Microsoft should be happy that Vista is replacing XP; after all, that is what it wants. It does not want users to switch to Mac, which is happening and if Microsoft doesn’t start producing higher quality products, there will only be more of the same in the future.”
Do you have any scientific proof of that (did you ask every costumer in the world who bought a Vista PC and a Mac what was their 2nd choice?) or is that just another typical ignorant let’s-just-say-Apple-is-taking-perspective-Vista-customers-away-from-Microsoft-because-it-sounds-cool-and-no-one-can-deny-it comment? I think what Microsoft is happy about is that Vista, despite ignorant claims from the media, is the fastest-selling OS ever, with around 40 million copies sold in around 3 months, and that its market share is groing way faster than MacOS or MacIntel is; notwithstanding that is not what you want. Of course it doesn’t want users to switch to Mac, which always happened, is happening and always will happen as long as Apple doesn’t go down, as if it has more than 90% market share it’s very probable the user comes from those 90%, the same way Apple doesn’t want most users to choose Vista over a Mac, which is also happening and in a bigger scale and if Apple doesn’t start making Macs highly-compatible like Windows is (with no need to reboot or virtualization), there will only be more of the same in the future too.
@ Kimi: OS X sucks.
Macs are for anybody who doesn’t know how to work with a PC and Vista is the fastest-selling OS ever (around 40 million copies in around 3 months).
I say f*** Macs!
July 15th, 2007
First of all, the numbers for Vista were skewed. That included all “express upgrades” and EOMs that are probably still sitting in boxes. Secondly, Mac’s can’t do anything above what PCs can do, so whats the point in paying more for less software and hardware options?
FTR - I’m running XP, Fedora and OS X on this laptop. (Not a Mac, incase one of you guys are slow.)
December 27th, 2007
[…] bioneural.net wrote an interesting post today on Vista and Mac OSX increase user base, Linux slipsHere’s a quick excerptWindows Vista and Mac OSX continue to slug it out and while Microsoft and Apple … lost almost an entire percentage point to Internet Explorer 7,… […]