MacDailyNews’ Browser, OS stats show iPhone powering up the charts, Vista withering, and more

By popular demand (okay, a few readers have asked recently), here are the top 10 browser/OS and individual operating systems by percentage for MacDailyNews for September, October and November 2007 (Nov. 1, 12:00am – Nov. 20, 3:30pm EST):

MacDailyNews.com Browser/OS stats:
1. Safari / Macintosh – Sept: 60.77%, Oct: 59.89%, Nov: 58.77%
2. Internet Explorer / Windows – Sept: 12.81%, Oct: 13.17%, Nov:12.52%
3. Firefox / Windows – Sept: 11.02%, Oct: 11.39%, Nov: 10.85%
4. Firefox / Macintosh – Sept: 9.65%, Oct: 9.76%, Nov: 9.23%
5. Safari / iPhone – Sept: N/A. Oct: N/A, Nov: 2.86%
6. Safari / Windows – Sept: 1.61%, Oct: 1.63%, Nov: 1.61%
7. Camino / Macintosh – Sept: 1.32%, Oct: 1.26%, Nov: 1.15%
8. Mozilla Compatible Agent / Macintosh – Sept: 0.70%, Oct: 0.69%, Nov: 0.67%
9. Firefox / Linux – Sept: 0.45%, Oct: 0.53%, Nov: 0.48%
10. Safari / iPod – Sept: N/A, Oct: N/A, Nov: 0.35%
10. Opera / Windows -Sept: 0.36%, Oct: 0.36%, Nov: 0.35%

MacDailyNews.com Operating System stats:
1. Macintosh – Sept: 73.03%, Oct: 72.12%, Nov: 70.33%
   – Intel – Sept: 54.46%, Oct: 56.28%, Nov: 60.51%
   – PPC – Sept: 45.54%, Oct: 43.72%, Nov: 39.49%
2. Windows – Sept: 26.00%, Oct.: 26.75%, Nov: 25.48%
   – XP – Sept: 84.63%, Oct: 84.88%, Nov: 85.24%
   – Vista – Sept: 7.75%, Oct: 7.87%, Nov: 7.13%
   – 2000 – Sept: 5.91%, Oct: 5.55%, Nov: 5.25%
3. iPhone – Sept: N/A, Oct: N/A, Nov: 2.86%
4. Linux – Sept: 0.59%, Oct: 0.65%, Nov: 0.59%
5. iPod – Sept: N/A, Oct: N/A, Nov: 0.35%
6. (not set) – Sept: 0.31%, Oct: 0.34%, Nov: 0.30%
7. SunOS – Sept: 0.03%, Oct: 0.03, Nov: 0.03%
8. PalmOS – Sept: N/A, Oct: N/A, Nov: 0.02%
9. Playstation 3 – Sept: 0.01, Oct: 0.01%, Nov: 0.01%
10. SymbianOS – Sept: N/A, Oct: N/A, Nov: 0.01%

MacDailyNews Note: Obviously, we serve a specific market and type of user. Therefore, we have rather different stats that a general-use site. The world would be a less frustrating place for personal computer users if general-use sites matched our stats. Regardless, the trends are what are important, not the actual percentages which always vary based upon what’s being measured and who’s doing the measuring (as always – think Mac market share). The important questions are: what’s going up, what’s going down, and what’s going nowhere?

When you look at the trends, a few things jump right out:
• iPhone and iPod have emerged strongly this month. Mac OS’s and Safari’s “drops” are really increases based on the emergence of iPhone+iPod (OS X- and Safari-based).
• Linux remains a pipe-dream outside of the data center. (It’s been flatlined around 0.60% forever. iPod will likely pass it here soon.)
• PPC continues to lose ground steadily to Intel-powered Macs. (In April 2007, Intel had 45.36% vs. PPC with 54.64%.)
• Vista is losing ground to the over 6-year-old XP in share of Windows sufferers. (We looked back to take a closer look at Vista: 3.96% in April, 4.50% in May, 5.48% in June, 5.77% in July, 6.04% in August, then 7.75% in September, 7.87% in October, and down to 7.13% in November so far).
• Safari for Windows (released in June 2007) has flatlined. (July was the high point at 2.16%).

Readers are often surprised that a quarter of MacDailyNews readers are using Windows. From anecdotal and/or via traffic stats, we know that many of those visitors are Mac users who are stuck on some Windows PC at work and/or school and also a significant percentage come to us from Google News and similar services.

56 Comments

  1. When the majority of Mac users are on Intel processors, we will see the commencement of iTMS Rentals, perhaps even HD.

    Why? Because EFI will be tapped for the copy protection/prevention of screen recording software, video out etc.

    That’s my prediction anyway.

  2. And in other news:

    Almost 100% of people in BMW service centers own BMWs. BMW refused to comment on how unreliable this made their cars look compared to other vehicles.

    The majority of people who watch basketball games like watching basketball.

    The majority of people browsing in Apple stores are considering buying an Apple product.

    Most people who live in America are Americans.

    However in a shocking difference, in France, most people are French.

    And finally 100% of Mac OS X users use Mac OS X.

  3. MDN,

    You’d get many more hits from me and my iPhone if you’d make the site more iPhone-friendly. Yours is the only site that consistently either does not load at all or takes 3-4x longer to load than any other site (while using EDGE)!

    I can’t tell you how frustrating this is…and my iPhone ain’t too happy either.

    Help!

  4. I have a general-use web site. Most of my traffic is in English-speaking countries, but every country with electricity has hit my web site. I’ve had requests for permission to translate parts of it into Turkish, Urdu, and Punjabi. (I’m as surprised as you are!)

    According to my server logs for 2007 to date:

    Windows’ market share has declined by 2% from 94.48 to 92.49. That’s a lot of market share considering that a very large percentage of my readers are accessing my site from businesses, as well as from military and government installations that are locked into Windows.

    Macintosh has increased 24% from 4.67 to 5.77.

    My web site has nothing to do with computer technology, but for some reason I can’t figure out, Linux has increased 98% from 0.6 to 1.19.

  5. Even W2K is a rip-off of another brilliant piece of work: Alpha OS.
    It was cancelled with the Alpha processor after compaq got a hold of DEC, the accompanying OS was written off. The chief architect of that OS went directly to work at MS and re-created is in the form of Win2K

  6. And in other news … wait, that’s been done.
    The majority of folks coming to this site are Mac users, even if they are using a Windows box at the time. Thus the preference for the Mac platform.
    I run three podcasts and a web site – none devoted to Mac, or Windows, or Linux, or any other technology. The two that are theater-specific tell me that there are more Macs out there than you might suspect. Of over 1,500 hits per day, perhaps 300 are from Macs. (the other two casts are “personal” and see about 50% Mac visitors)
    Dave

  7. PS3 even has a percentage? that’s amazing, I own a PS3 and the installed browser isn’t all that great, purposefully browsing with it must be painful…

    I’m also one who visits this site mostly at work, so one of the XP/Firefox guys.

  8. The PS3 stats are most likely mine.

    I check MDN bookmark from the PS3 web browser either before/after fragging people online instead of firing up my badass MacPro.

    Now that PC and Mac 3D gaming is on the decline for cheaper, more powerful and easier to use consoles, I can see them branching out into other computer like uses.

    For instance the PS3 can handle video and music files and servers, browse the web, email and other things. But not nearly as good as a computer. Not yet anyway.

    PS3’s can’t multi-task like a computer either. But Blue-Ray DVD’s in surround sound are awesome!

  9. PS3 even has a percentage? that’s amazing, I own a PS3 and the installed browser isn’t all that great, purposefully browsing with it must be painful…

    Not really, if you know all the controls and have a keyboard hooked up to it. (Apple’s works) It’s quite decent.

    It’s good if your already using the PS3 for something and just need to check the weather, MDN, news etc. really quick without firing up the computer.

  10. I for one, don’t own a Mac (yet). I access this site either via my corporate laptop or from my home desktop (self built) both running XP. I did buy an AppleTV and a Shuffle of late, if they count somewhere.
    I remain a huge fan of most things Apple and the Steves, and am a fan of MacDailyNews for awhile now.
    I do appreciate you posting these stats.
    Would it be possible to put some actual numbers, like how many viewers have you been getting every month (without hurting your business), and if the viewership is on the up?

  11. @ Wall Street Journal online gift survey – pls vote

    At 19:45 Eastern US Time, Tuesday 20 November, the iPhone had 57% of the vote. The next closest item was Blackberries, at 14%

    Let’s go folks, you know your duty!

  12. Yah, MDN staff claim to be working on an iPhone-friendly version of this site. Don’t be fooled… they’re first trying to figure out how to plaster as many ads as possible into the narrower view, and then they’ll possibly add some content. Based on my daily observation of their management of this website over the past 3 years, I can only come to one conclusion… they are hypocritical folk that really don’t know what they are doing at the technical end of things. They excel at choosing content for their site, and writing Takes, but that’s as far as it goes.

  13. ” Based on my daily observation of their management of this website over the past 3 years, I can only come to one conclusion… they are hypocritical folk that really don’t know what they are doing at the technical end of things. “

    Ditto

  14. Get real:

    The data from here will be disproportionately affected by events in the Apple world, because of the readership. After some announcement from Apple, visits to here from Macs will spike despite no change in actual Mac market share. The source does matter.

  15. Dear, MDN

    I use both my Mac Safari and my iPhone’s Safari (at times, Safari on Windows)….while Mac and Windows’ Safari perform fine.

    Your site’s performance on my iPhone “Edge or Wifi” is embarrassing. It takes almost a two minutes to load page (filled with banner ads) via Edge on my iPhone and almost 30 seconds via WiFi on my iPhone. Contrast that to Macrumors, 9to5Mac, AppleInsider, TUAW, those load mostly in a instant!

    I use your RSS feed to see your top stories, but when I clicked on “full article” I’m presented with the same performance problem.

    I’ve emailed you privately about this issue. Have you made good on your word? If so can you explain the problem? My guess, is too many banners and advertisements to load.

    – Gman

  16. I regularly visit MDN with win2k on my old, reliable Thinkpad (7 yrs old and going strong) which also runs iTunes 7.2, Firefox 2.0.0.9 and Picasa 2 simultaneously. I’m listening to Knopfler’s latest (purchased from iTMS,) uploading pics to Picasa web, DL’ding a few songs from eMusic.com and reading this site at this very moment. I’m grabbing the wireless signal from the satellite modem in my house next door. I know… all this is passe stuff these days, but I’m still amazed how useful this old, creaky laptop with 392 MB ram, running a trimmed down and lean win2k actually is. I really do like the older Thinkpad products, especially their durability and keyboards… you can just pound them and they’re just the best engineered – great tactile feel, etc. Win2k was definately the high point in MS OS development, and I’ll never upgrade to another MS product. Just turn off all non-essential services and ports, and button it down pretty good, and it get’s real stable.

    I come to this site because I’m an AAPL stockholder, and plan to re-enter the world of Mac shortly after the first of the year (hopefully, Apple will have a new thin, flash-memory notebook by then.)

  17. Interesting. The VISTA figures for MICROSOFT must be causing huge grief in Redmond. This is looking at ( predominantly ) the non commercial sector ) unless everyone has so much spare time in the office to trawl MDN. And what is says is that VISTA is a consumer flop. How long before Ballmer announces that Ultimate/Business/Home editions of VISTA all cost $129 in a fire sale attempt to drum up interest.

  18. Observations: iPhone is nearly ridiculous to use on MDN due to the number of ads that one has to wait for. Why would I be suprised that Vista and Windows are either “flatlining” or going down? After all it is an Apple propaganda website that HATES windows and windows users. Hum, I use Vista, why not check out MDN to get some nice verbal abuse.

  19. I’m a PC user and will continue to be until the (online) multiplayer games on I like to play have clients that run on the Mac OS.

    My wife uses a Mac and I think the machine is great, but I don’t like the fact that I can’t continually upgrade the video card, processor etc as new tech becomes available — I have to buy an entirely new machine.

    However, we both enjoy using our ipods (hers on Mac, mine on PC) and we own stock in the company (basis $89/share!).

  20. I used to be one of the “data skewer” when I would surf MDN at work (on a XP machine with Firefox). But, alas, no more. No, the IT dept. at work didn’t finally get a brain, I’m on a “sabbatical”. In other words layed off but with a 6 month full severance package. Time to work on the website I have owned for 3 years but done nothing with – AppleArguments.com. I will let the MDN crowd know when it is done.

    @El Guapo,
    Is that you Bas Rutten? I didn’t know you were a Mac user!

    http://www.answers.com/topic/basrutten-jpg-1

  21. Harvey, concerning your site:

    Christianity: The belief that a cosmic Jewish Zombie who was his own father can make you live forever if you symbolically eat his flesh and telepathically tell him you accept him as your master, so he can remove an evil force from your soul that is present in humanity because a rib-woman was convinced by a talking snake to eat from a magical tree…yeah, makes perfect sense.

  22. What’s surprising is the small numbers for Camino. The latest build, with RSS goodness, is a joy to use.

    “God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything” – Christopher Hitchens. All you retards with middle fingers should check it out.

  23. Vista is NOT withering. All that WOW cannot wither or fade or whatever other adjective describing a descent into decay you might choose to use.

    It’s called SPOOFING, OK? We Vista users, especially me the Grand High Vista Executive User of All Time, set our browsers to identify as Macs. It’s the most effective way of stopping websites installing viruses, Trojans and other assorted nasties.

  24. “set our browsers to identify as Macs. It’s the most effective way of stopping websites installing viruses, Trojans “

    I tried that, but now all I get is sites serving up gay porn rather than the straight stuff. Talk about effectively marketing to the different customer bases!

  25. “From anecdotal and/or via traffic stats, we know that many of those visitors are Mac users who are stuck on some Windows PC at work and/or school and also a significant percentage come to us from Google News and similar services.”

    Hey! That’s me!

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