“Mac OS X 10.8.x, known as Mountain Lion and the current release of the operating system, has accounted for a majority share of the web traffic from Macs for the first time, according to new figures from web statistics firm Net Marketshare,” MacNN reports.
“The crowning comes just five months after the release of Mountain Lion, and took about half the time it took Lion (10.7) to take the lead position away from Snow Leopard (10.6) as the most popular version of OS X,” MacNN reports. “Snow Leopard is still the second-most popular OS X version installed, with just under 30 percent of the base compared to Mountain Lion’s 32 percent; Lion is now in third with 29 percent.”
MacNN reports, “Earlier versions of OS X such as Leopard (10.5) and Tiger (10.4) have fallen to insignificant percentages, with Leopard around eight percent and Tiger around two percent.”
Read more in the full article here.
There are two sets of OS adopters. Those who upgrade their existing system when a new OS is released (me) and those who upgrade only when they replace their older machine.
The second set are not insignificant. I know some still use SL for a certain functionality but the majority are those who have an older machine and have not upgraded their OS.
For me the higher traction rate is indicative of greater Mac sales. Apple are consistently selling ~5M per quarter so that is adding close to 20M Macs a year.
A very good situation to be in.
OS 10.6 Snow Leopard users are hardly “insignificant”. They represent productivity users who know what a solid, efficient operating system is supposed to be — and they have absolutely no compelling reason to adopt OS 10.7 or 10.8 at all.
Why waste time and money switching to more bloated, less efficient OS? This is why new machine sales with OS 10.8 are replacing OS 10.7’s market share, but rock-solid OS 10.6 remains popular and is actually being installed on newer machines by quite a few diehards who owe no allegiance to “social integration” fb and twit crapware or non-value-added “clouds”.
I have 4 Macs, a G5 running Leopard (that cannot be upgraded) that plays videos on my bedroom TV and is my back-up server for my work laptop; a MacBook Pro running Snow Leopard that I use for work and that I won’t upgrade because I don’t want stuff to break; a Mac mini running Mountain Lion that is my media server in my living room; and a MacBook Air running Mountain Lion that I use as a glorified remote control for my two servers.
OS X Lion broke more legacy software than Mountain Lion did. That is the reason for the quicker adoption. Once you fixed your apps on Lion going to Mountain Lion was a breeze.
It’d take a lot more share if you could load it on perfectly serviceable older Macs otherwise not able to go full 64-bit. My 2007 3Ghz 8 proc Mac Pro with an SSD runs like new. Oh well eventually what we’ll have a 128-bit hurdle and obsolescence to deal with eh? Can’t wait for the 2013 Mac Pro! Do us proud Tim! (Non-Mac Pro customers need not apathetically comment please.)
But they will anyway. 🙁