Mac OS X market share cracks 8%

Re:Mac OS X market share cracks 8% by biohacker42 on Friday October 03, 2008 @03:03PM (#322954)

Does anyone care to guess what the critical level is?

Presumably at some point OS X stops being a niche market, and producing cross platform software becomes almost mandatory.

I'd guess 30%.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Mac OS X market share cracks 8% by LogicHoleFlaw on Friday October 03, 2008 @04:00PM (#322994)

It's exactly the point at which the loss of revenue due to incompatibility is greater than the cost of developing cross-platform.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Mac OS X market share cracks 8% by akd on Friday October 03, 2008 @08:18PM (#323219)

Thanks for exactly restating his question. I needed that.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Mac OS X market share cracks 8% by bdr on Friday October 03, 2008 @08:52PM (#323240)

Hey, it made things clearer. For example, when you break it down like that, you might realize that the cost vs. benefit analysis is different for different kinds of software -- there is no "critical level" in general. This is good news for Apple. As their market share grows, software crosses that threshold continuously (as opposed to all at once). That makes their platform become continuously more appealing to users too, creating a positive feedback loop.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Mac OS X market share cracks 8% by jrockway on Friday October 03, 2008 @04:30PM (#323031)

producing cross platform software becomes almost mandatory

How does this explain all the Mac-only software?

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Mac OS X market share cracks 8% by cstejerean on Friday October 03, 2008 @05:33PM (#323108)

Producing cross platform software becomes mandatory for companies that make Windows software currently (unless they don't mind their market shrinking). For Mac only software the market is growing so if they're happy enough at the moment there be even less incentive for them to develop cross platform.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Mac OS X market share cracks 8% by comatose_kid on Friday October 03, 2008 @03:58PM (#322993)

'In the last two years, Mac OS X's share has increased by 3 percentage points, a gain of 58%.'

That's about 25 percent CAGR, so there are still a few years to go before we hit that point, assuming of course that the growth rate is sustainable.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Mac OS X market share cracks 8% by eelco on Friday October 03, 2008 @04:35PM (#323046)

Uh. In other news, no wait, in the same news (the site the article is based on, link at the bottom), Linux' market share almost _doubled_ in 9 months. How's that for growth ;)

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Mac OS X market share cracks 8% by Prrometheus on Friday October 03, 2008 @07:01PM (#323171)

I was intrigued by that, too.

However, iPhone share is growing quicker and it's going to be slightly embarrassing when the iPhone passes Linux in market share.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Mac OS X market share cracks 8% by siculars on Friday October 03, 2008 @01:53PM (#322877)

well with the five or so apple laptops and desktops i have in my house alone i wonder what took them so long. but really, i would like to thank microsoft for vista ;)

disclaimer, not including two iphones and various generations of ipods :)

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Mac OS X market share cracks 8% by omouse on Friday October 03, 2008 @01:43PM (#322857)

Are they counting the iPhone, iPod touch or iPod etc operating systems as part of OS X?

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Mac OS X market share cracks 8% by unalone on Friday October 03, 2008 @01:56PM (#322882)

No. This includes desktop OS only.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Mac OS X market share cracks 8% by geuis on Friday October 03, 2008 @02:15PM (#322902)

Yeah, the iPhone/ipod touch stats are at the bottom of the article.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Mac OS X market share cracks 8% by tlrobinson on Friday October 03, 2008 @05:20PM (#323092)

I'd like to see market share stats broken down by segments of the market, i.e. business, servers, consumers, etc.

I suspect OS X's consumer market share is much higher.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Mac OS X market share cracks 8% by opal on Friday October 03, 2008 @03:44PM (#322985)

Too bad it's a fake *nix. Not compatible out of the box with 95% of linux applications.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Mac OS X market share cracks 8% by lallysingh on Friday October 03, 2008 @04:26PM (#323026)

darwinports does a pretty good job. And for many things, the mac has better software available.

Besides "fake *nix" could apply as well to linux as to darwin. Remember that OS X actually licensed the Unix name...

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Mac OS X market share cracks 8% by opal on Monday October 06, 2008 @11:45AM (#324992)

No. You can compile the vast majority of unix projects on linux and run them with no modifications. Darwinports is ok if you want only the top 1% of popular projects, often several versions behind.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Mac OS X market share cracks 8% by jrockway on Friday October 03, 2008 @04:31PM (#323033)

Too bad

Why? OS X doesn't stop anyone from running Linux.

[ Parent | on HN ]