“Adoption of Apple’s OS X 10.11, aka El Capitan, continues to lag behind its two predecessors, new data released this week showed,” Gregg Keizer reports for Computerworld.
“One measurement put El Capitan’s uptake at just 75% of its forerunner, 2014’s Yosemite, according to statistics from U.S.-based analytics vendor Net Application,” Keizer reports. “In the 153 days between its Sept. 30, 2015 launch and Feb. 29, 2016, El Capitan’s user share of all OS X editions grew to 47.9%, or approximately 0.31 percentage points per day. On a per-day basis — from its Oct. 16, 2014, debut until Feb. 28, 2015 — Yosemite accumulated an average of 0.4 percentage points of growth.”
Keizer reports, “Even 2013’s OS X 10.9, better known as Mavericks — and the first upgrade that Apple offered free of charge — was more quickly adopted on an average daily basis than El Capitan: During the 130 days between its release and the end of February 2014, Mavericks grew by 0.38 percentage points per day.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Much ado about nothing.
Keizer reported on Feb 2, 2016:
Four months after Apple launched El Capitan, the OS powered 44.8% of all Macs, according to numbers published Monday by U.S.-based analytics firm Net Applications. El Capitan’s 45% — of all OS X versions, not all personal computers — was a smaller share than predecessors like 2013’s Mavericks and 2014’s Yosemite accumulated by the end of their fourth full month. By that point, Mavericks had garnered 45.3% and Yosemite an even more impressive 51.4%.
The comparisons have some wiggle room, however. El Capitan debuted on the last day of September, while Mavericks and Yosemite were released on the 22nd and 16th of October, respectively. Using complete months as a measuring stick gave Mavericks a 14-day head start over El Capitan, and Yosemite an 8-day jump.
By discounting those leads, Mavericks was actually slightly behind El Capitan around the four-months-and-one-day mark. [Bold emphasis added – MDN Ed.]
For years I used to rush to “buy” and install new OS updates Mavericks and now El Cap have began to educate me that it is probably better to slow down. Every time I upgrade something breaks. Right now on El Cap I’m having weird graphics driver issues. Also I have to pay to upgrade my Parallels every time I upgrade to Apple’s “free” OS Update. I think I’m going to sit the next upgrade out for a few months or maybe skip it completely hoping for more “stability” vs new wiz bang features.
I used to skip a version of Parallels if I can. It all depends on whether you need the new functionality or whether Parallels will run on the new MacOS. Luckily now I do not need Parallels as I can VPN and remote desktop to my office PC using Mac software. It did bug me that Parallels would try and force you to upgrade with every new MacOS.
Agreed, that’s why I haven’t upgraded parallels in the last 3 years. Left Windoze behind finally.
Been running El Capitan on my Mac Pro and MacBook since day 1 and it’s been smooth sailing.
Same here with my 2014 MBP and my 2007 Mac Pro 2,1. Heh.
If the next OS is named Snow Capitan, I’d upgrade immediately.
I hear it’s going to be Skipper, then Gilligan followed by Maryann, Professor, Thurston, Lovey and finally Ginger (oh snap, that’s been used).
Yup. Snow Leopard was the best. Ever since then, I feel like I’ve been forced to go along for the ride.
I recently installed 10.6 on a Mac mini as entertainment server, and was amazed to see there was only 12 processes running after a fresh install. El Capitan has over 200 going from scratch.
I’m still using Yosemite 10.10.5 as my main OS. El Capitan 10.11.3 is still full of bugs. Maybe when they release 10.11.4 or 10.11.5 it might be worth putting on my iMac, but not right now as it stands. And then Mac OS X 10.12.X (Fuji) will be out and I bet it will be flaky as all get out until the release 2 or three updates. Just IMO…..
I’m curious – what are some bugs that El Capitan is full of? I’ve been using it for about 5 months and haven’t found any problems so far. It seems pretty stable from my usage.
I would update except that El Capitan Disk Utility no longer supports RAID drives (which I use) and I am not expert enough to use Terminal commands. I have been waiting on an update to Disk Utility, as have others.
I agree about Disk Utility. It’s prettier but doesn’t do some things I found useful.
It ain’t prettier. It’s harder to read, tagging sucks, and iLife and iWork apps are less user friendly than they were in 2009.
The reason people don’t want to upgrade is because each version of OS X has been inferior since Snow Leopard.
Boot in networkrecovery cmd- option-r start diskutility there you have the old version with software-raid options still available! Gr
Fair enough, but that’s still a downgrade in capability. With iPhoto / Aperture now also killed off too, the OS X Ecosystem advantages are dying … it no longer is as compelling of a product.
My current batch of Mac Pros may very well be the last…
Yep…less functionality for those who want to manage their own systems. Apple seems to be catering to the masses more and more. Another example…wish there were an option to disable SIP instead of having to resort to terminal commands via the Recovery Tools. Each time there is a new beta version release, have to go through the same terminal steps. 🙁
Get a RAID card. They are cheap.
I have always used Pro products like Soft Raid and Onyx to run permission
Fix. Apple is turning the osx into an iPad style OS, ugly icons, no scroll bars, opposite
scrolling, no disk on desktop ect.
The biggest turn off of 10.11 is slower boot times becuase of security systems like SIP’s
This is evedent in the dissapearance of the cycle wait counter that was replaced with a progress bar, you can count cyles (harddrive usually takes up to 15 cycles and an SSD 3-4),
its ironic and funny that the cycle icon reappears when you shut the machine down.
Appart from the fact that old System/library/extentions can also stop your machine from booting
Its only the nwer machines that seem to be faster with this osx.
El Capitan is a better faster operating system then Yosemite. And the requirements are the same. I do have a beef with Disk Utility which lost so many functions. Please send feedback to Apple to let them know that removing functionality from Disk Utility is NOT okay.
Um, no.
El Cap has so damn many background processes and needless overhead, the only way to make it faster than prior versions is to manually turn off everything … and then you just have to deal with an oversized OS with reduced usability and all kinds of compatibility issues.
Snow Leopard just worked. No version of OS X since has.
Oh and there is no buying of any OS X upgrade at least to the latest version. They are all free upgrades. If you want to upgrade to anyone in between by special request Apple will make you pay around $20 and let you download a version.
Or, if you’d previously used earlier versions of OS X, go to the Mac App store and re-download previous versions, at least as far back as OS X Lion on my MBP here.
I thought there was a story saying el cap had a fast uptick in adopters?
I’m running it with no issues, only real complaint is hoe Apple changed finder to not work as well with apps like extra finder etc.
I’m with you as far as XtraFinder goes. I still have it on my work machine, running Yosemite, and I do miss it on El Capitan.
I really like the dual panel thing with Tabs – very convenient.
And I know there’s a workaround, but I really don’t want to compromise System Integrity Protection.
A couple of things the author did not consider:
1. There are a lot of older Macs still running well that may not qualify for the upgrade or users have decide to not upgrade because it will slow down the aging machines.
2. A lot of users don’t even bother to upgrade the OS. They keep using the original version unless someone else upgrades it for them.
Computerworld, what is the uptake of winblows 10? Most likely less than 75%.
You don’t get out into the real world much, do you?
Longstanding and excellent publication MacWorld is owned by IDG.
IDG also owns PC World and ComputerWorld and TechHive and GreenBot.
Just because a publication doesn’t focus 100% on Apple doesn’t make it a bad company. Except in your myopic view, apparently.
I used to upgrade immediately, but, more recently, every upgrade breaks something (e.g.: scanner, printer) costing me a lot of hours and hacking to fix.
Additionally, this time I was put off by the issues with Office 2016 – a must use at work.
El Cap is slower for me on both my Macbook and Mini, especially Safari. Moving toward Firefox more every week.
Weird. El Cap is faster on my MBP, about the same on the older (2009) iMac.
Maybe there’s something there regarding SSD vs HDD systems.
“Maybe there’s something there regarding SSD vs HDD systems.” I have heard that, hope its not true, just another expense.
“The free El Capitan upgrade can be obtained from Apple’s Mac App Store, and supports iMacs as old as mid-2007, MacBook Pro laptops from late 2007 on and MacBook Air laptops from late 2008 going forward.”
Thanks from a proud 2012 Mac Mini user.
The only functional problem I’ve had on multiple occasions is my sidebar favorites suddenly fail to show up in application open dialogs. The favorites would still appear in the Finder but when I go to a File/Open dialog the favorites would be gone. It’s very frustrating – -especially when you need to navigate to the iCloud folder. I found out I had to delete the com.apple.sidebars.plist file and restart. Then all is well.
I’m going to keep saying “no thanks, maybe later” to full OS X updates until Apple starts taking OS X seriously again.
Earlier this week, one of my internal hard drives failed to mount. So I opened Disk Utility, selected the drive, clicked the Repair button, then everything was good again. It occurred to me then that if I was using El Capitan, I would have had to figure out how to do the same thing using Unix commands in Terminal.
Having the drive not “just work” was annoying enough, but then having to lookup and type a series of Terminal commands on top of that would have made it a real pain.
???
Other than RAID tasks, I can still mount/unmount and repair volumes, etc. without resorting to the terminal.
Or were you repairing a RAID volume and just failed to note that that was what you were doing?
If think you’re right. I haven’t actually used El Capitan’s version of Disk Utility, I had only heard that most of its features were gutted. But upon further research, it looks like it would have been able to repair and mount my hard drive in that case.
One excuse for not to update gone. El Capitan here we come?
if apple can make peace with adobe and make creative clouds latest software work again, Apple will again see a LOT more upgrades. until then people will pospone upgrading from yosemite. period!
I waited because I didn’t want to have to upgrade Parallels, once I was sure that the upgrade to Parallels would be compatible with my custom software, I jumped to El Capitan. I wonder if similar issues have not challenged others.
Fix the Hotspot issue please. El Capitan causes me to feel fear to bring my MacBook Pro out since Hotspot is so unreliable due to Bluetooth interfering the Instant Hotspot connection. Now I’ve to off Bluetooth and manually on Hotspot for reliable connection with my iPhone 6S, which means Apple killed Continuity!!! Give more features and letting go some features and Hotspot is a must to work just fine if Apple really think mobility is the future.
I’ve not upgraded because there aren’t any killer features, and because it nukes MenuMeters, which I rely on. Any suggestions for replacements? I know I’ll have to make the jump eventually…
I had to scrounge around for drivers for my still functional peripherals (high quality old photo printer and scanner, e.g.) as it is in Yosemite (got ’em from some Linux library I can’t recall), and see nothing in El Capitan that makes me want to chance breaking them again (and maybe for good).
Yosemite Mail drops support for personal email addresses. My wife and I have been using person email address for years, and in past operating systems those addresses have been forwarded as our sending address, and return. Not the Apple addresses that Yosemite forces. With great pain, we faked the system to work, but I shouldn’t need to do that.
I had so much problems with ElCap on one computer I refused to do my other two. I called Apple and they agreed that sometimes you just can’t upgrade so they helped me get back to Yosemite. I doubt I’ll ever upgrade.
Dear Apple, there is no rush. New OSX and iOS every two year period with twelve major updates will be absolutely OK.
1st year – transition, adoption, polishing, securing
2nd year – securing, users feedback, feature tweaks.
And let older Macs to run latest OS even with some features disabled – just like iOS 9 running on iPhone 4s. It makes customers very very happy.
I have been running El Capitan on my nearly 8 year old MacBook for quite a while. No problems for the most part. Id id notice that one minor printer driver problem I had under Yosemite had gone away and then returned with El Cap installed. But, the printer actually works fine. Not sure what that is about, but since it isn’t really broke, I’m not going to stress out fixing it.
El Cap does run slowly on the old MacBook, but that is to be expected considering the horsepower under the hood. I never had an 8 year old Windows computer that was worth keeping. Even my four year old iPad has cracked and stressed out under the new iOS. But, the MacBook just keeps chugging along.
Computerworld is not where I turn for accurate Mac reporting or well-informed reader comments. So Yosemite adoption was 5% ahead of El Capitan? 5%? That rates a story? There is also the usual assortment of yahoos – referring to tons of bad reviews. Google “review OSX El Capitan” and see what you find.
The writer also refers to “the first free OS upgrade” as being in the recent past. I remember that every version of the OS was a free upgrade for the first decade.
As for immediately upgrading – always a bad idea. Let the early adopters stub their toes, followed by six months of bug fixes. That’s when I adopt.
Re: El Capitan – I had to spend a couple of days messing around with stuff – a driver or two and then deciding how to deal with various unimprovements. I also spend a month or so being annoyed at Apple for never bothering to address issues that have been a pain in the neck for a full decade. For the younger users out there, I can say that through MacOS 8 every upgrade (minor or otherwise) was a blast. The OS simply got better and better. And then Apple adopted the tunnel-visioned-genius method of upgrades supervised by project managers who did not have the experience (and wisdom) to really know the system inside and out before they changed something. To this day, Apple continues this approach of dropping things because the people in charge weren’t aware of them or didn’t understand why they were useful. Every upgrade now is like a pizza where I have to remove the anchovies and then wonder why they decided that pepperoni was not worth including.