“Other than freaking out Microsoft, which continues to charge up to $199 for a copy of the latest version of Windows, making OS X Mavericks free was considered a sure way to encourage quick adoption by Mac users,” Gene Steinberg writes for The Tech Night Owl. “Indeed, for the first few weeks, it did appear that loads of Mac users had downloaded and installed the upgrade.”
“According to a published report, however, it does appear that the popularity of Mavericks may have hit the skids, while the user base of OS X Snow Leopard, circa 2009, remains reasonably constant at 19.5%,” Steinberg writes. “After hitting 32% in November, according to Net Applications, which tracks online traffic, Mavericks ‘merely’ increased to 37% in December. This, according to the article in question, must be a troublesome development. You see, some 22% of Mac users are still running Mountain Lion and 16.3% have stayed with Lion.”
“The article uses the dreaded ‘fragmentation’ word to create fear, but the numbers require a more linear analysis. You see, the rapid growth of Mavericks the first few weeks would largely have consisted of early adopters. The numbers in December likely consist largely of those who set up new Macs on which OS 10.9 was preloaded,” Steinberg writes. “The real question is how many of that 63% of remaining Mac users can actually upgrade to Mavericks.”
Much more in the full article here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Sarah” for the heads up.]
Related article:
OS X Mavericks adoption slowed significantly in December – January 3, 2014
I don’t buy the whole “Mavericks is fee because it’s worthless” argument.
“The article uses the dreaded ‘fragmentation’ word to create fear, but the numbers require a more linear analysis. You see, the rapid growth of Mavericks the first few weeks would largely have consisted of early adopters. The numbers in December likely consist largely of those who set up new Macs on which OS 10.9 was preloaded,” Steinberg writes. “The real question is how many of that 63% of remaining Mac users can actually upgrade to Mavericks.”
With that logic he may want to ask how many iPhone users counted in the % not upgraded to iOS7 can actually upgrade to iOS7.. As far as I know those numbers never counted non-upgradeable iPhones.
Just another thought: contrary to what Apple seems to believe, not everyone has unlimited, ultra-high-speed bandwidth delivered to their ethernet port. Those who do, have upgraded. Other people are asking “more than 4 Gigabytes? For what?”
Download-only delivery was a bad, bad, bad idea from the beginning. Just sell the thing on a USB stick at Apple stores already!
My biggest bitch with Mavericks is that I’m constantly seeing photos that I’ve included in PDFs now suddenly appear upside down, whereas before they were fine.
Have they fixed iMovie yet? I’m still using version 6 HD, not that i mind.
Trolling or not, I agree with them. I really don’t like the trend Apple is taking with Mavericks and iOS 7. I wish I had never heard of either of them. To each his own, right? Then Apple should not trap a customer in an upgrade, if they don’t like it. Yes, you can revert Mavericks, well, maybe. It depends on your backups, etc. It ain’t easy though.
Actually, memory management in Mavericks is better than in any previous version of OS X. It looks to me like all of the important improvements in Mavericks are under the hood.