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As fun as that would be, the more plausible explanation is that statcounter is bobbins. Windows has not lost a quarter of it's users in a year, and certainly not to Apple...
Wait, MacOS and osx on separate lines means that in 2026 almost 20% of global user agents are with a MacOS version released before 2016??
The "os x" line is to be interpreted as "badly coded scraping bots with outdated user agent", right?
Never get excited or scared about the final data point in a time series. Especially when it’s a ratio metric that will conceal it when the data begins that final data point is still only partial.
It’s right there with never start a land war in Asia and never go in against a Sicilian when death is on the line.
This is due to some changes made that statcounter doesn't apply to their data properly. So statcounter is very unreliable atm.
That looks like a methedology change at the very end.
Theres no way it dropped steadily for a decade then plummeted 20% in a month?
Its also interesting that iOS popped up from zero. What is that? If they're asking "what is your primary computer," Android and iOS would both be there and considerably higher, so what does iOS even represent here?
60% is suspiciously low. Most companies use Windows, what is your source?
Last time this was posted it came down to many bots run on Linux. Thus if near 60% of all internet traffic is bots. These numbers show nearly nothing of value when it comes to figure out what humans are using anymore.
The truth is that the data isn't transparent enough, and we have no idea about the causes. Everything is mere speculation
This chart is for desktops, I imagine most bots aren't running on desktops, right? So if it's counting bots the methodology is wrong.
They use desktop user agents if they don’t identify themselves with a known bot tag
Last time this, or something like this, was posted it was because fewer and fewer people are using PCs at home. They just have a smartphone or tablet and that's it.
In that case they're not using windows they're using MacOS or Android.
It’s because of the recent explosion in bot traffic. Bots are largely run on Linux, using basic desktop user agents. So when studies like this look at desktop traffic, they see a disproportionately high number of Linux desktop users. But in reality, the vast majority of those “users” are actually just bad bots and scrapers who aren’t properly flagging themselves as bots (because they know sites will block them for scraping content).
this is from statcounter.
I mean - I like the numbers, but I doubt their validity:
https://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share/desktop/worldwide/#monthly-200901-202608
Why is iOS listed under "desktop operating systems"?
I assume they are including tablets as desktops
Ugh
Yeah, nobody is running a router as their desktop.
Newsflash: desktops are dead. We are absolute dinosaurs. Most people dont have one. They only use a phone.
Source: mostly every normie I know.
Sucks for them if they have to limit their Internet perspective to a shitty little phone screen. I'd still rather be the cool dinosaur with my gaming desktops with big screens and mechanical keyboards.
My kids love gaming on the desktop computers too - that's the Trojan horse (games) that gave me motivation to learn how to use computers in the first place. Gotta learn how to work the computer to get the games to work.
Yep I feel the same.
However, you can plug that little crappy phone into a DEX hub with a KB/mouse/monitor and play witcher 3 which is cool.
Not my jam though. I like to actually own my hardware, and be able to repair it. Something phones will never do.
A lot of it was due to how awful windows is, folks gave up trying to work around all the bullshit and said a phone is easier.
I totally feel you. Something to be said for our era where it took work to make games work and that gave me a baseline of computing knowledge. Kids today play on browser or hit download on steam and it works. Which is fine. But they get 0 learning from it. Hence why Young's are idiots at computers unless parents teach it outright.
Both cloudflare stats and statcounter show desktops with roughly 46% of the marketshare. This is definitely not dead, definitely not an "absolute dinosaurs" thing.
I wonder why people are like that every time a post like this appears. Too much insecurity, perhaps?
Also, somehow, these days, people tend to act like everything below 50% is absolute zero when it comes to tech
Well:
"Desktop" includes laptops, just to be clear.
I would expect mobile web traffic to be conspicuously low since most use apps instead.
It doesnt break down age statistics.
Those people are peasants.
Because desktops are expensive. You people just can't afford them. You need to put at least 1k into the PC then another 200 into the screen, then mouse, keyboard, headset, webcam... They are cheaper off buying a phone.
Young people barely own stuff anymore. Their wealth is historically low as the tech barons, land barons, and so on own everything they want: homes, tech, uni debt, subscriptions, everything. And meanwhile the young are expected to work longer hours for less pay. In certain countries their pay is taxed up to 50%, but a wealthy person doesn't get a salary so they aren't taxed.
Their parents didn't do much better either, but they didn't have it as bad. But it was bad enough that daycare and childcare is fucking expensive, so they shove a phone into the child's face: now the children know phones from a very young age and are also conditioned to buy one asap because it's all they know.
So yeah, I don't blame young people for not owning PCs. Our society has fumbled, is fumbling, and will continue to fumble making it affordable. If we want young people to be more interested in computing beyond telling Claude to write shit for them, we should be worrying about the wealth gap and affordability crisis.
And OS X has changed its name to macOS:)
Yes, in 2020, as part of a way to market a regular annual OS update. The distinction between OSX and MacOS makes zero sense here.
I know it makes zero sense - that’s what I’m trying to point out. It’s been called Mac OS X, OS X, and macOS in the past 15 years or so ;)
What I would really like is if they'd given OS X a colour close to Mac OS, instead of close to Linux.
They should just merge them. They don’t show up Debian and Arch or different kernel versions separately. Windows 7/8/10/11 is also not separate. It just makes the bottom of the chart too crowded, while macOS could be closer to the middle
Oh nevermind it's 2016 actually
The fucking file system doesn't even work on windows.
Is delayed enough that is goddamn aggravating. All that fucking stupid onedrive shit, I'm guessing.
Neuter it!
It still works, but you have to strip all those features to keep it usable.
What is the "macOS" that apparently launched in 2025? 🤔
It's been called "macOS" since 2016: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MacOS#Timeline_of_releases
It's been called MacOS since 1997
And more importantly, it's the same thing as OS X. They shouldn't be separate lines.
I like to bash on Windows but MacOS jumping overnight from 5% to 20% is a bit unbelievable
Ok that the MacBook neo sold many units, but I don't think it's this many.
Those stats are aggregated from web visits so IMHO it's ai scrapers faking a MacOS user agent to scrape with less suspicion
It's the inverse of the OSX curve. Probably an OS update that renamed it.
I agree, many websites discriminate against linux and most likely give a blind pass to MacOS wouldn't be surprised if scrapers figured this out, and about the MacBook neo first it was made with the lower end of the binned ipad chips, the supply was already low to begin with, MacBook user share is highly inflated in people's perseception compared to reality, Macbooks virtuay don't exist outside of the imperial core
Probably a combination of user agent spoofing and aggregating mobile browser activity incorrectly
I choose to believe that one of those 'others' datapoints is my copy of Freedos.
People who think 60% is too low haven't met a young person in a while, I think... virtually everyone in every class I teach uses Apple computers or tablets; I'm absolutely not surprised that's where most of the change has gone, at least for personal use. (And in the US specifically)
That said, I'd have thought the 30% mac share was earlier than 2010, this suggests that it's more recent? Apple might as well been running a psyop to get young people to use their products since the 90s. I remember when I was in middle school, they "generously" donated a lab full of those colorful iMacs to my school. Seems it might have been the first computer many of my peers had even touched, too.
People who think 60% is too low haven’t met a young person in a while, I think…
Since last year when it was still around 80%?
The severe drop is probably not permanent, while the gradual downturn probably is.
Market share =/= people
I wonder how China ditching ms is gonna look like on this graph.
Sad that OSX is taking the lions share of that drop, but it's better than nothing, I suppose. One battle at a time. One tiger at a time.