Quote: Original post by ChurchSkiz
I'm seeing more and more macs, my guess is that it is due to the recent price breaks.

Yeah, I've also noticed that. Everybody around me suddenly seems to be using some form of MacBook.

I think those statistics are dominated by average home users. I'm a physicist and I rarely come cross a Windows based system. We have a 1120 core cluster here, do you think it is even counted as one PC in that statistic?
Windows might be the A and O of gaming but for more serious tasks Linux is often preferred. (CERN, NASA and Roadrunner).
I don't think all those statistics count also servers, clusters and computers used in different institutes.

Its a sad fact that for every set of statistics which appears to follow a trend, there is another which demonstrates the opposite. Statistics in general are affected by inadequate sampling, gatekeeping (dont publish your results if you dont like them) openness to interpretation and secondary adgenda influences / sabotage.

The only way to be sure here would be to pick a sample of *your* user base and ask them.

>>I think those statistics are dominated by average home users.

Well I assume its only counting stuff connected to the web, but yes the numbers are gonna be skewered to home users, eg schools which tend to be chiefly mac's (at least here in nz) we're talking a hell of a lot of PCs but only a percentage have unlimited access to the net.

>>I have a feeling that the w3schools.com website only tracks their own users

perhaps thats true, I suppose www.google.X would give a nearly accurate picture

According to Microsoft, Linux and Mac both have about 5% market share.

Source: http://www.osnews.com/story/21035/Ballmer_Linux_Bigger_Competitor_than_Apple

The nice thing about using Linux is that it doesn't need marketshare to continue to improve. In fact I'm quite happy on the edge of that bell curve.

Macs seem to be a lot more popular than 10 years ago, probably since the iPod came on the scene. They're hugely cool in the laptop sector though I don't know any typical user who owns a Mac desktop.

Also, according to those stats, Firefox is really kicking aardvarks -- 47.4%!

Quote: Original post by trasseltass

Is it just me or has both linux and mac gained a lot of ground over the last 5-6 years? The windows family is still dominating, but does not seem to be moving forward.

How can you move forward if you have nearly 100% of the usage share?

Quote: Original post by Lode

Quote: Original post by trasseltass

Is it just me or has both linux and mac gained a lot of ground over the last 5-6 years? The windows family is still dominating, but does not seem to be moving forward.

How can you move forward if you have nearly 100% of the usage share?

By selling more computers to the same users?