“OS X Mavericks powered half of all Macs that went online in March, the largest percentage of any individual version of Apple’s operating system since 2009’s Snow Leopard, statistics showed,” Gregg Keizer reports for Computerworld.
“Mavericks, which carries the numerical designation of OS X 10.9, accounted for 49.5% of all Mac operating systems tracked by Web analytics company Net Applications last month,” Keizer reports. “The six-month-old operating system gained about 4 percentage points in March, slightly more than the month before.”
“Apple has not disclosed what it will name the next version, OS X 10.10, or when it will release the upgrade, but is expected to reveal the former at its annual Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC), which will run June 2-6 in San Francisco,” Keizer reports. “If the company repeats last year’s process, it will unveil OS X 10.10 at WWDC on June 2 and make a preview available to registered developers that same day. Although Apple could surprise customers — and developers — with an early launch of the upgrade, for the last three versions Apple has waited an average of 148 days between announcement and official release. Using that average and a June 2 announcement, OS X 10.10 would launch on Oct. 28.”
Read more in the full article here.
Meanwhile in the Windows world, their most recent, two-years old OS still commands less than 12% of the market. In fact, the four-year old Windows 7 gets less than Maverics (48%). And the kicker is Windows XP: the twelve-year old still powers one in four PCs!
We can say whatever we want about Maverics, but it is clearly a better OS than any other released by Apple (otherwise, those on Snow Leopard, Lion or Mountain Lion wouldn’t have upgraded).
Looking at it another way: 96% of ALL Macs out there run an OS that is released within less than 5 years.
Snow Leopard is still my favorite, although I run Mavericks.
I drive a modern vehicle daily, there’s something to be said for fuel injection and airbags, but classic cars are still my favorite.
My car metaphor may not work that well in America, on second thought. Americans have disproportionately high percentage of fans of “classic” cars (in Europe, they are usually called “old-timers”, and are just collected, not driven much, since they are no longer road-legal, due to poor emissions and safety). In addition, many of those who look in awe at car shows at big SUVs often end up buying big SUVs. This isn’t the case elsewhere.
My 1980 Camaro gets both road time and track time. I just don’t want to drive it to work. It’s for fun.
As long as a vehicle meets the emission standards for the year it was produced and is roadworthy, there’s no reason it can’t be on the road (at least here that’s the case). If it’s more than 10 years old, it needs a safety inspection to get registered. That’s it. After that, there are no more inspections needed.
It’s pretty relaxed here in Canada. Especially Alberta.
Snappy. 😛
Does the survey include ‘all’ Macs or just the Macs capable of running Mavericks? Seems to me there was just a recent story about how many machines were still running Snow Leopard or Lion because of the age of the machines.
Net Applications doesn’t know what specific hardware is behind the stats; all it knows is that it is a Mac with Snow Leopard (or Maverics, of whatever in between).
Hey, I resent that… LOL I have 7-8 mac minis running OSX 10.5.8 cause its the latest that they can run. However, safari and iTunes are still a pretty recent version on that OS.
Except for watching youtube, they are pretty snappy on many things.
50% for an OS that was free. LOL!
remind me again, how much does Ubuntu cost?
I wonder when the IMAP email fail will be fixed, if ever.
I have no problem with it.
Not sure I like the high speed of these OS upgrades. I would like to see Apple on a 2 year cycle. Gives developers time to get their apps “fixed” from the last upgrade and me to learn the “ins and outs” of each one.
Wish they’d fix some stuff before moving on. Music producers have had a devil of a time with Mavericks and audio interfaces. I have not upgraded because I cannot have a production machine that may not work with my equipment.
the BOE in the town where I work is just now upgrading many of their desktop machine from xp to 8….. the teachers & staff using them act like its their first time on a computer……….
It still powers my FireWire drives, too. In fact, it has never stopped powering them… 🙂