Mac OS Adoption Rising, Linux Desktop Too
According to a Net Applications Survey Mac adoption rose with an increase to 7.1% of the total market share for web browsers (as in clients not in actual web browsing programs, that's how MarketShare collects OS stats).
Looking at the stats there is also a rise in Linux desktop users who have risen to .63% of the total market a rise of 10% versus the Net Applications reported .57% share Linux held in November.
One interesting side note is that there is no way to account for those users running Windows via Bootcamp or virtual machines (Parallels, VMware). It would be interesting to see what the actual native OS numbers look like. Interestingly both Windows Vista and XP saw rises too, so I have to wonder what is the statistical significance and accuracy of the data or if the multiple OSes on a single machine might have an effect on this.
For more Mark Hinkle, visit his Socialized Software blog.
I can see XP and Vista numbers rising slightly, as older versions of Windows get decommissioned with the machines that run them. Just last week I upgraded from Windows ME to Ubuntu.....
I'd be surprised if it made much of a difference. If I was running virtual Windows, then that implies that Linux (or Mac) is my main desktop. That is, I'm only running Windows when I need to - usually to do something I can't do under Linux.
I can browse perfectly fine from Linux these days, so even if I was running virtual Windows, I'd probably still be doing my browsing in Linux.
Take those numbers with a grain of salt. W3schools gives a very different picture. They cannot both be right and in fact they are both wrong having clientel unrepresentative of the IT universe. NetApps is into lots of com sites. W3Schools has lots of M$-only stuff like asp/NET.
Instead, look at IDC survey data, Google /trends and the like. ASUS plans to sell 5 million GNU/Linux eee PCs in 2008. That is similar to the whole count that NetApps gives to GNU/Linux. Dell and HP and Everex and System76 and others have been selling pre-installed boxes and lots of GNU/Linux geeks have been installing boxes for years. Reality is probably closer to 6% for both GNU/Linux and Mac OS.
MacOS X is not used widely in developing countries because it requires Apple's proprietary and exclusive hardware. Almost nobody in these countries has an Apple machine and therefore PC and pirated windows have the absolute majority.
In some of these countries, specially in Brazil (where I live), linux is very popular between geeks and IT people because it is free as freedom and as beer. I for example always used linux on my desktops and I never used as Apple machine because its prohibitive cost here and the lack of freedom to make incremental upgrades.