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Why not link to the source? https://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share/desktop/united-states-of-america/#monthly-200901-202302 https://gs.statcounter.com/os-mar

Why not link to the source? https://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share/desktop/united-states-of-america/#monthly-200901-202302 https://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share/desktop/united-st...

willio58 4y ago
Small feedback for whoever created that graph: Mac OSX was renamed to MacOs 7 years ago. Larger feedback: Why is iOS on that graph? It's supposed to be desktop software but it shows a small spike for it a few years ago.
- zamadatix 4y ago
  I'm not affiliated with Statcounter but I think I can answer both of those since I play with these charts a lot. Regarding OS X calling it macOS wouldn't be any better since it includes counts of users from both. It'd probably make more sense to just call the group "Mac" or "macOS/OS X" but it's too late to change the name of the category since paid users had been exporting the data into tools expecting "OS X" and it's a silly thing to break that for. Similarly splitting the two into separate categories or changing the display name vs data name is more problematic than using the old name. The OS version breakdown for macs started in 2017, after the name change, and uses the macOS name for the overall category as well as for the newer operating systems in that category so they are definitely aware and keeping up with the name changes where it makes sense to. If you change the graph settings to include tablets it'll give an in-graph note that they weren't tracking tablets and consoles as different from desktops until the start of August 2012. It'd probably be good to include that note in the desktop view as well though. For iOS that means iPads (launched April 2010) were bucketed as desktop browsing sessions rather than tablet until that point. While it's safe to assume all of those should be relabeled tablet their policy on data changes is after 45 days they will not go back and modify/correct data.
bcrosby95 4y ago
I'm curious what the raw numbers look like. Is OSX gaining users, or is it just not dropping as fast as Windows?
- beautifulfreak 4y ago
  Not raw numbers, but the percentages of market share by desktop platform are listed here: https://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share/desktop/united-states-of-america https://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share/desktop/united-st... Mac is supposedly at 29.62%
  - zamadatix 4y ago
    The same percentage is listed in the link above. If you flip to show all OS not just desktop the only ones that have almost certainly grown in absolute users are Android/iOS (absent most of the population leaving the internet in the last 10 years which we know to not be true), the rest depends on actual usage not percentage of visitors. It's good to keep that last bit in mind when looking at these graphs. It's technically possible for users to have increased usage on a platform AND for more users to have started to use the platform but the platforms usage share goes down. This is because more users are present over time and users can browse on more than one device more than once per day.
duskwuff 4y ago
Interesting to see how much the Chrome market share seems to be driven by education -- it drops noticeably every year between June and August, when students are on summer vacation.
johnea 4y ago
No raw numbers, no cooked numbers, really no information of any kind. That doesn't even really qualify as an "article". More just like an excuse to send out links to a website...

Why not link to the source? https://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share/desktop/united-states-of-america/#monthly-200901-202302 https://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share/desktop/united-st...

willio58 4y ago

Small feedback for whoever created that graph: Mac OSX was renamed to MacOs 7 years ago. Larger feedback: Why is iOS on that graph? It's supposed to be desktop software but it shows a small spike for it a few years ago.

zamadatix 4y ago
I'm not affiliated with Statcounter but I think I can answer both of those since I play with these charts a lot. Regarding OS X calling it macOS wouldn't be any better since it includes counts of users from both. It'd probably make more sense to just call the group "Mac" or "macOS/OS X" but it's too late to change the name of the category since paid users had been exporting the data into tools expecting "OS X" and it's a silly thing to break that for. Similarly splitting the two into separate categories or changing the display name vs data name is more problematic than using the old name. The OS version breakdown for macs started in 2017, after the name change, and uses the macOS name for the overall category as well as for the newer operating systems in that category so they are definitely aware and keeping up with the name changes where it makes sense to. If you change the graph settings to include tablets it'll give an in-graph note that they weren't tracking tablets and consoles as different from desktops until the start of August 2012. It'd probably be good to include that note in the desktop view as well though. For iOS that means iPads (launched April 2010) were bucketed as desktop browsing sessions rather than tablet until that point. While it's safe to assume all of those should be relabeled tablet their policy on data changes is after 45 days they will not go back and modify/correct data.

bcrosby95 4y ago

I'm curious what the raw numbers look like. Is OSX gaining users, or is it just not dropping as fast as Windows?

beautifulfreak 4y ago
Not raw numbers, but the percentages of market share by desktop platform are listed here: https://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share/desktop/united-states-of-america https://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share/desktop/united-st... Mac is supposedly at 29.62%
- zamadatix 4y ago
  The same percentage is listed in the link above. If you flip to show all OS not just desktop the only ones that have almost certainly grown in absolute users are Android/iOS (absent most of the population leaving the internet in the last 10 years which we know to not be true), the rest depends on actual usage not percentage of visitors. It's good to keep that last bit in mind when looking at these graphs. It's technically possible for users to have increased usage on a platform AND for more users to have started to use the platform but the platforms usage share goes down. This is because more users are present over time and users can browse on more than one device more than once per day.

duskwuff 4y ago

Interesting to see how much the Chrome market share seems to be driven by education -- it drops noticeably every year between June and August, when students are on summer vacation.

johnea 4y ago

No raw numbers, no cooked numbers, really no information of any kind. That doesn't even really qualify as an "article". More just like an excuse to send out links to a website...