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Topic: Apple

Lion OS making gains in Mac installed base

Summary: Depending upon where you look for results, Mac OS X Lion is running on 30 or 40 or whatever percent of machines in the Mac installed base. All agree that this number keeps climbing.

David Morgenstern

By for The Apple Core |

Depending upon where you look for results, Mac OS X Lion is running on 30 or 40 or whatever percent of machines in the Mac installed base. All agree that this number keeps climbing.

Chitika Insights, an online data analytics company, reported recently that Mac OS X Lion has a 30.47 percent share, while Mac OS X 10.6 (Snow Leopard) and 10.5 (Leopard) have 47.48 percent and 16.4 percent shares, respectively. The Preview of the forthcoming Mountain Lion OS due in the summer has a 0.06 percent share the site reports (it would be unreasonable for anyone to think it would would have any measurable number).

According to Net Applications' Net Market Share counter, Lion has almost caught up to Snow Leopard. Its share figures are Snow Leopard 43 percent, Lion 40 percent, Leopard 14 and Tiger 14 percent. Mac OS X Mountain Lion and the mysterious Other versions have zero percent.

The strength of Snow Leopard isn't so much of a surprise. There are still good reasons not to upgrade. A number of important applications require the Rosetta PPC translation technology, which is not available under Lion. Rosetta is required by a number of applications used in professional Adobe workflows as well as Quicken for Mac.

While Intuit a few weeks ago released Lion Compatible Quicken Mac 2007, which should work on Mac OS X Lion, it appears by the comments in the support discussions that the progress is bumpy and the software is crashing for many users. This isn't the best experience for any program but especially one for a productivity app.

I still receive one or two letters a week from folks who upgraded to Lion and didn't get the message about Quicken. If you are running Quicken for Mac, don't upgrade to Lion unless you have a spare machine that can run Snow Leopard or Leopard. I don't recommend running Snow Leopard as a separate boot on a Lion machine.

Aside from the Mac OS, Net Applications says that the iOS platform has a 60 percent share of the mobile market. Java ME and Symbian are the big losers over the course of the past year: Java fell from 24 percent to 15.86, and Symbian fell from 6.3 percent to 2.77 percent. Good for Apple and Google (Android).

Topics: Apple, Hardware, Operating Systems, Software

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14 comments
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  • Wow!

    Look at how fragmented that System is! I cannot believe that Apple cannot get these updates out to all their devices!
    slickjim
    Reply Vote

    • Huge different between updates provided and update not provided.

      Just saying....

      Pagan jim
      James Quinn
      Reply Vote

      • I know what you mean...

        So this Lion runs on All Apple computers does it? Think before you answer Jim, the two situations are not very different.
        slickjim
        Reply Vote

    • Huh?

      " I cannot believe that Apple cannot get these updates out"

      This is like not all Windows users having Windows 7 yet.

      Apple doesn't force these updates, juslt like MS doesn't force them.

      All of the Mac OSes mentioned work well, it's not like there is a screaming need to get a better OS.

      Yes, the later the version, the better it is, but Apple users do not, contrary to blogger hate speech, feel the need to have the latest thing from Apple.

      Also since Snow Leopard and onwards require Intel procesors, and PPC Macs are still quite viable computers, it is not suprising that the older versions are still in use.

      Again, Mac users don't rush out and buy the latest Apple hardware, rather they get a good 8 years from their computers in most cases.

      So Peter, what were you expecting to achieve with that statement?
      richardw66
      Reply Vote

      • wow you guys are touchy...

        Cannot even make a joke on these forums.

        And pretty much all of the Android Devices work well too but we see articles about.version numbers.
        slickjim
        Reply Vote

  • There is a good reason to Lag

    I, like many, have been abandoned by developers and now Apple. One program that I have relied on for almost 20 years now is Canvas. Under Denaba this was an excellent product. ADC purchased Denaba and abandoned the Mac customer base that the company and product was built on. Be that as it may, I have a version that does everything I need it to do and is still a very powerful application. Apple continued to allow me to run this program with the invention of rosetta. Problem is, they only supported rosetta for a single major version of the OS. Now Lion, with out rosetta, does not allow me to run a program I am completely reliant on. I have looked for an alternate but have not been able to find one (at a comparable price) that will do the job and read/convert my old files intact with all the richness they currently have like layers, typography, etc.

    My question is why can't rosetta be supported in Lion. I'd pay money to purchase that compatibility layer. Apple can make money and still encourage developers to move forward with updated apps. Sometimes it simply is not cost effective or in my case, possible to move forward. Instead Apple chose to alienated a large portion of its user base, not good for keeping customers especially those that have been loyal for most of the company's life span.

    Find a way to add in rosetta support and I'd be happy and eager to upgrade as I always have in the past.
    bws605
    Reply Vote

    • well

      They dropped power PC, then dropped core duo and you are surpised they dropped Rosetta?
      slickjim
      Reply Vote

    • Rosetta since 2006

      Rosetta was introduced in 2006 with OS X 10.4.x. So it was an incorporated part of the system in Tiger, Leopard, and Snow Leopard.

      You observed that "Apple can make money and still encourage developers to move forward with updated apps". From Apple's point of view, that is exactly what they did. I was a Mac Genius in 2006. From the very onset Apple informed *all* developers that rosetta was available "to assist until the Intel transition is complete". It was never intended to be a 'forever solution' but was always an interim aid to devs in order to buy them some time.
      I suspect that rosetta is not supported in Lion for a few reasons:
      1) It costs money to develop, test, support, update (security updates for one), test again, develop for new OS release, test, support, update, test again ... For Apple this is a big commitment to a technology that is part of its past, not its future. That's not how they do business.
      2) As Apple moves to less and less local storage (Macbook Air, iCloud, etc...) the need to have extra code (aka bloatware if you don't happen to need it) becomes a constraining issue for the hardware.

      I see your point, but Apple made its intentions to leave PPC hardware years ago. Then, and since, they have discussed the fact that this would cause code to be left behind at some point. Your application developer made the choice to abandon Mac users by not updating their code with the times. This is not what Apple did to you, but rather what the makers of Canvas did to you.
      use_what_works_4_U
      Reply Vote

    • Rosetta come home

      Thanks for your feedback. True that Apple let developers know but making rosetta available as an add on for those that truly need it, because they have no other course of action would be greatly appreciated. No bloatware because it is an add on that a limited population would need and pay for. Once the revenue stream dries up then I can see them stopping support for it. But alas our pleas fall on deaf Apple ears.
      bws605
      Reply Vote

      • What is the ROI?

        I freely admit that I don't know this, but how integrated would this need to be with the OS as a whole? In other words, how trivial is the proposal you make?

        With an admittedly smaller subset of the community needing this tool, what's the market look like? In order to make money (or break even), what would you have to charge that subset of users? More than the $29 you sell the primary OS for?

        Also we need to remember that people tend to seek the path of least resistance. If Apple continues to ship (extra cost or no) a tool that allows developers to avoid re-writing their applications, the developers will take even longer to move products forward to fully native code. Why would Apple want that?

        If you want your third party products to live on, what you need to do is lobby the products' developers. By not moving to fully native code, the developer has decided to deprecate the product. If you want to use a tool that isn't being made anymore (like an app native to your favorite platform) you have 3 choices:
        Lobby the manufacturer,
        Find another product,
        Build the product yourself.

        I don't disagree with the premise you put forth, I really don't. I just don't see the percentage for Apple (or any Developer) to remain mired in their old code base more than 5 years after they announced they were leaving it behind. I don't want to shell out for a version of Office:Mac that doesn't require rosetta, so I found another product. It's the reality of the marketplace.
        use_what_works_4_U
        Reply Vote

      • "No other course of action..."

        The last release of Canvas for Mac was in 2005. The last patch was in 2007. You managed to eek 5 extra years out of it. You had a good run. It's time for new software.
        RationalGuy
        Reply Vote

      • It still exists on 10.6

        For any person who "truly needs it", there are actually many other courses of action available. You can run Mac OS X 10.6, or 10.5, or even 10.4.4+. You can keep a separate hard disk or partition running OS X 10.6. You can buy a cheap old Mac mini or iMac to run it, separately from your Lion Mac. You can run OS X 10.6 in a virtual machine on your Lion Mac. You can buy an even older (and cheaper) PowerPC Mac so you don't even need Rosetta to run your PowerPC software. You could simply not update to OS X 10.7, since relatively few apps, so far, actually require it.

        It's funny you propose Apple maintain Rosetta until "the revenue stream dries up". Isn't Apple in a much better position to say whether Rosetta is actually a "large portion of its user base" or not? Perhaps that has already happened. How would you know?

        It's also a bit odd that you accuse Apple of abandoning users, when ACD Systems (maker of Canvas) haven't released a Mac version of Canvas in 7 years. Canvas predates the PowerPC transition, even, so apparently they were OK with transitioning from 68k to PPC, from Mac OS to Mac OS X, and even from Mac to Windows. I would say that ACD Systems probably found that their revenue stream had dried up, which is why they never even recompiled it for Intel Mac OS X. That would have been far easier than any of the other 3 major transitions they did.

        Is Apple supposed to support every program that ever ran on one of their operating systems, for all time, until zero users still want to use it? If Canvas had never been updated to Mac OS X, would you be complaining that Classic is gone? If Canvas had never been updated to PPC, would you be complaining that the 68k emulator is gone? Where does it end? (See also: the "Apple II Forever" movement.)

        Also, your claim that Apple "only supported rosetta for a single major version of the OS" is strange. Rosetta was first released with OS X 10.4.4, and supported on 10.5 and 10.6. I'm not sure how you got "a single major version" out of this.
        beau parisi
        Reply Vote

    • Just the two of us

      So, Bws605, looks like you and I are the last two graphics guys in the world that truly NEED Canvas X to work on our Macs. Right? Haha! (I know, not that funny) I, like you, have been with Canvas since 3.0. I have enjoyed mostly crash-free design experiences for 28 years. I have designed and produced logos and signage for the industry for decades. I not only truly love the program, I absolutely need it to recover 10s of thousands of dollars worth of client job files. I, like many of us sign guys, have always chosen a graphics program to design with. Then we save it in our various cutting, printing and carving machines' hard drives to produce our livelihoods.

      I'm right this moments sitting here stuck in the mud. I upgraded my 3 year old iMac to Liion and now I can't open a single thing from Canvas X. Did I go back and partition the HD for Leopard OS? You know I did! However, I have a stinking error message stating " Canvas not serialized. you must reinstall. " I never had the original CD. Three years ago, the ACD people sent me the program via email. I've lost it somehow between too many moves around my hard drive and a small stroke a year ago. I'm remaining in Hope that they will not do what I've read lately online ~ "Sorry we no longer support Mac in any way shape or form...so tough caca." okay, I'm paraphrasing, but you're feeling me I'm sure.

      ~Gear...waiting for the key to unlock a career's worth of work.

      ps And I'll bet you we are in a huge crowd of folks with this dilemma. I've personally known hundreds of fellow graphics people that have used Mac/Canvas.
      Geary Wootten
      Reply Vote

  • Haven't upgraded my school yet

    But the only reason is that the UI change is significant enough that I'm waiting until we retire the last PowerPC devices this summer (and hopefully get new iMacs to replace them) to move the school's Macs to Lion. I don't want to have students learn two ways of functioning for computers that are otherwise identical in function and software.

    I've got my Lion images prepared, just waiting for the summer bell to ring before making the plunge.
    ssaha
    Reply Vote
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