
Windows 8 more widely used than OS X, IE still on the rise - shawndumas
http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2013/09/windows-8-more-widely-used-than-os-x-ie-still-on-the-rise/
======
bhauer
Bravo to Firefox for keeping Chrome at bay for another short while.

Boo to the folks still using IE 8. Also boo to the innovation-repressing
homogenization of mobile.

~~~
nivla
I maybe wrong but I think a lot of users are switching back to Firefox from
Chrome. My personal observation is that Chrome is getting more bloated, buggy
and intrusive. Sad to see my favorite browser degrading.

~~~
sliverstorm
That's certainly what I did. Firefox has improved immeasurably (at least for
me) since about version 14, while Chrome has crept up in size. As a point of
reference, if I open one tab in Chrome with Google Music and I let my computer
idle for a minute, the various Chrome processes will sum up to between
800-1024MB of memory. You know how much Firefox with 8 tabs takes? 420MB.

Apparently people don't like this comment, but unlike some I do not possess
scads and scads of RAM.

~~~
derefr
My hypothesis is that Chrome is lately sacrificing memory for speed by doing
heavier matryoshka caching on the rendered parts of a page. This is important
for, say, smoothly compositing DOM elements on top of a WebGL canvas, or
compositing CSS3-animated elements into a scrollable div. (Actually, I'd think
this would cause higher video memory usage, not regular memory usage, but I'm
not quite sure how Chrome tracks video memory; is it all grouped together as
the memory usage of the "GPU process" in Chrome's task manager?)

------
ceph_
Is Netaplications an actual reliable source? They're results are so far skewed
from that of all of the other web usage analytics groups.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_web_browsers](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_web_browsers)

------
kyllo
Never thought I'd see the day that it would actually be _news_ that the
current version of Windows is still selling more licenses than Mac OS X.

~~~
w1ntermute
Seeing as OS X is at 7% market share, I would say that it has less to do with
OS X and more to do with users not upgrading from previous versions of
Windows. Not that you would ever even think that when walking around SF.

~~~
kyllo
Yeah, I think it's mostly enterprises' "do not want" reaction to Win8. Win7
was great for enterprise, but Win8 is just a horrible fit for that market. I
think it will get skipped by enterprises just like Vista did.

~~~
w1ntermute
> Win8 is just a horrible fit for that market

If they bring back the Start menu (which they're half doing in 8.1) and allow
the OS to boot directly into Desktop mode, then I think that Windows 7 and 8
would be essentially the same for enterprise users. They can just ignore all
the new touch/consumer-centric features that have been added on. In fact,
there are quite a few improvements under the hood from 7 to 8 that they could
benefit from.

~~~
kyllo
So the selling point is that it's not worse than Win7, and the new consumer-
centric touchscreen features can just be ignored, and there are various "under
the hood" improvements that no one ever actually explains.

I'm not exactly seeing a compelling reason to break out the corporate
checkbook here.

------
brownbat
Yeah, I was shocked by the "dad" test:
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v4boTbv9_nU](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v4boTbv9_nU)

And when Gabe talked about 8, I winced: [http://www.neowin.net/news/valves-
gabe-newell-calls-windows-...](http://www.neowin.net/news/valves-gabe-newell-
calls-windows-8-this-giant-sadness)

But watching a few "tips" / "best of new features" videos for 8.1... I start
to feel a little left out.

Just type to search. Re-engineered file copying. Hot corners make it seem like
someone at least skimmed an article on Fitt's Law. And, ooh, Win + Print
Screen? Just make the screenshot a file. Yeah, should have been fixed back in
95.

So, er, maybe they got a few things right?

I haven't upgraded yet, but... the dissonance is mounting.

~~~
mkr-hn
8.1 has me considering an upgrade. I'm assuming it'll run on a laptop that
runs Windows 7. Though it's probably more economical to just upgrade the
laptop unless they offer an OEM->full upgrade path. I could use a few more
cores and > 4GB of RAM.

------
chrischen
OS X is at 7.44% according to the graph.

Windows 8 is at 7.41%.

~~~
RKearney
OS X is at 7.25% according to that graph.

3.42 + 1.65 + 1.65 + 0.53 = 7.25%

~~~
UberMouse
Maybe they updated the graph but I also got 7.41% after adding all the OSX
percentages after I read that comment shortly after it was posted.

~~~
chrischen
Yes the graph appears to have been updated at September 3, 2013 6:47:17 PM

It used to be 3.42+1.73+1.76+0.53

------
eksith
Windows XP is kept in the ranks, by and large, by the Chinese
[http://www.networkworld.com/news/2013/080713-china-has-a-
mas...](http://www.networkworld.com/news/2013/080713-china-has-a-massive-
windows-272608.html)

It's unlikely to change any time soon since if it ain't broke[1]...

[1] Your definition of "ain't broke" may vary.

------
ape4
I can't imagine anyone using Windows 8 by choice.

~~~
kyllo
My wife likes it. She bought a computer with it. But I complain constantly
when I have to use it, and fix it for her. It took _way_ too much effort just
to locate "control panel".

I like Windows 7 just fine and don't see how Win8 improves upon it in any way.

~~~
russellsprouts
Win-X gives a menu with the control panel and a lot of other options. Once you
get used to it and look up the keyboard shortcuts online, it really is better
than 7. Unfortunately it isn't discoverable.

~~~
numo16
> Unfortunately it isn't discoverable

I think this may be one of the largest problems for people making the switch.
After moving to Win8, a friend of mine enjoyed everything about the new OS
except for one "missing" feature from Windows 7. He couldn't hit the windows
key and type in the search box in the start menu to find programs he was
looking for. After I told him you could still do exactly this, I realized that
there is nothing on the start screen that really indicates that you are
automatically search focused (people are used to a search box that they can
focus on). Now that he knows about this he has no qualms, but I guess there
are some undiscoverable features that some of us have taken for granted in
win8 because we've actually read up on how to be a power user.

------
bickfordb
The desktop browser statistics in the article value Internet Explorer higher
than in other articles I have read such as this one:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_web_browsers](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_web_browsers)

~~~
powertower
Some stats count unique visitor totals of each Browser.

Other stats count page hit totals of each Browser.

Then you have ones that mess around with not including all of the particular
Browser's versions.

And there is no telling who's getting a world-wide sample, who's taking out
some coutries, who's samples over-represent a country because their traffic
collection base is there, etc.

------
jusben1369
Wow. WIndows XP. What a beast that it's still north of 30%. Too lazy but when
was it released and/or when was it replaced? I feel like it was superseded all
the way back in 2007 or so?

~~~
jetti
I would venture that the majority of computers that run Windows XP are either
people who don't use their computers a lot so that it wouldn't matter or
companies. Seeing as Windows XP SP 3 is still supported through 2014 [1],
businesses have no real reason to upgrade since it would be an added cost.

[1] [http://www.microsoft.com/en-
us/windows/endofsupport.aspx](http://www.microsoft.com/en-
us/windows/endofsupport.aspx)

------
ericcholis
Such a high number of Windows XP users isn't surprising, but it is infuriating
for those of us that wish to deploy SNI
([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Server_Name_Indication](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Server_Name_Indication)).

I know that MS will never release a patch for it, but seriously.

Previous discussion:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3857698](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3857698)

------
general_failure
I don';t understand how Safari can have > 50% market share. I mean people in
china and india definitely don't use iOS or OS X. How come safari numbers are
so high?

It's also interesting to see how common IE is. In my company, we don't even
test for IE anymore, it's chrome all the way. We think IE is negligible
minority now!

~~~
w1ntermute
> It's also interesting to see how common IE is. In my company, we don't even
> test for IE anymore, it's chrome all the way. We think IE is negligible
> minority now!

I know a ton of Rails web dev hipsters who totally ignore IE. It's quite
amusing to see the same guys who were whining about IE-specific sites back in
the early '00s now making WebKit-specific sites that they only test on their
MacBooks and iPhones.

