Mac OS X approaches 8 percent market share | Hacker News Reader

Mac OS X approaches 8 percent market share

arstechnica.com

24 pointsparenthesis23 comments

Can we throw a huge world-wide party when 'we' reach 10%? I will personally buy a crate of champagne to share with people in the Toronto area ;)

I don't think I'll ever understand this. Unless you own shares, one company's success over another isn't really anything worth celebrating. This isn't a good vs. evil situation no matter how much some people want to paint it that way.

Personally, I'm just happy that I can use any of the 3 major OSes these days without a problem, which is largely thanks to FireFox eating IE's marketshare on Windows.

It's analogous to seeing a really brilliant friend experience deserved, widespread success. It's a satisfying feeling to see earned triumph in any circumstance.

Except that your brilliant friend, being your friend, gives a damn about you personally, and Mac OS X, being an operating system, doesn't.

Do you use windows? Compared to that user experience, Mac OS X is a whole lot more personable.

If it's the case that someone has Vista misbehave continually in numerous ways and feels like the OS doesn't care, then if Mac OSX is a much more pleasant experience to that user then he will feel like the OS cares.

If you're an OS X user it is worth celebrating. Increased market share means more companies start paying attention to OS X which means more games, more software, better support and more employers starting to support/allow Macs.

I disagree. One of the reasons why Linux (and to a much lesser extent, OSX) rock so much is precisely because they aren't hugely popular.

Everything-windows is so commercialized, that even googling for home networking issues will keep landing you onto commercial message boards overloaded with ads and polluted by retards. And every little piece of shit software utility is $9.99 shareware.

10% won't be much of a problem, but I'm quite happy with how things are right now.

It's an excuse to hold a worldwide party! What is there to understand? ;)

Generally this is a good rule halo. But Mac OS X is a big exception.

5 years ago I predicted that MS would be gone and OS X would be the only widely available user friendly operating system (of course, the various Unix derivatives are going to survive and be healthy, but niche, players for many decades to come.. in fact Mac OS X is built on one of them, Mach 3 Unix, and is dependent on this programmer base for it's depth and stability).

I was obviously wrong in that prediction but "better late than never".

'Operating systems that aren't Windows' are already at 10% if you count Linux.

(Which you probably should - the benefit is the end of monoculture, not the promotion of a new replacement monopoly.)

I remember when Apple "approached" an 8 percent share from the other direction. :(

Wasn't it around 3% for a long, long time? That's an impressive jump. I wonder how much is because of Apple and how much is people avoiding Vista?

It actually makes no difference. Competitors fight for money in a market. Whoever makes less mistake then grabs more gold. It feels like baseball games between Red Sox and Yankees. But this game will never ends until PC fades.

We should cross check market share change of Linux Desktop at the same time. I think due to Vista's snafu, both Linux Desktop and OS X gain market shares. But it seems OS X grabs much more than Linux Desktop does.

And that's totally bizarre, because I've seen people wearing Linux-branded portable music players everywhere, and I've seen Linux distro logos in major motions pictures and even Metal Gear Solid 4. Given Linux's all-encompassing focus on making their software beautiful and easy to use, and their extensive TV and print ad campaigns, I'm amazed we haven't seen a major uptick in installs.

Are you serious or being irony? Your last paragraph makes senses if you replace Linux to OS x. At least in U.S. :-)

We often thought marketing doesn't matter to tech product. But I think marketing matters. But even marketing matters, if the product doesn't match expectation, the product will not go anywhere. The best marketing is done by users. When people see others constantly use Windows XP, they use Windows XP. When people see others use iPod, they use it. When people see others use Google, they use Google. It may be a herd effect. But most users don't care the subtlety. They have too much to worry in their life. Gadget, personal computer, Internet are just part of their life.

"""Given Linux's all-encompassing focus on making their software beautiful and easy to use"""

Personally I find Linux desktops to be extremely frustrating, buggy, inconsistent and not well designed. Many applications are ugly.

If you live in a terminal/firefox world you probably won't notice this though :-)

Whoosh!

I remember trying to install Linux...on my particular computer, it took ages, and never really worked.

...

It wasn't really a jump. Apple's market share has been growing more or less steadily since the switch to Intel. IMO I don't think that Vista has had much of an effect on mac sales; it's primary competitor has been XP.

All else aside, I'm sure that a significant factor has been the fact that you can run software for Windows on an Intel-based mac without emulation overhead.

Another factor that I'm sure hasn't hurt is that after the transition to Intel systems, the macs reached something close to price parity with the Windows OEM's. In some cases, the mac ends up being the less expensive option (specifically, the Xeon-based rigs), which is also new territory for Apple.

Soon we'll see whether or not Apple gets viruses proportional to its marketshare. This old, tired debate has been going on for way too long.

Apple doesn't get viruses proportional to its marketshare at present. Neither do most Linux distros.

In terms of majority market share, it's already been proven bunk for server software by Linux and Apache.

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