OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion Tops Lion as Most Popular Mac Operating System

[MacRumors]

According to Web analytics firm Net Applications (via Computerworld) Apple's OS X Mountain Lion is now the most popular version of OS X, just five months after its July 2012 release.

During December, 32% of all Macs that went online were running OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion. Usage of Lion, the previous iteration of OS X, dropped from 30% to 28%.

OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard, first introduced in 2009, remains widely used despite its age. As of December 31, it still represented 29% of Mac Internet usage. Snow Leopard remains for sale on the online Apple Store and has been lauded for its stability.

Easily accessible and reasonably priced upgrades have always enticed Apple users to embrace operating system updates. Apple famously boasted about selling a million copies of OS X 10.7 Lion in its first day of availability, and Mountain Lion also saw rapid adoption numbers.

Net Applications collects its data by tracking browser usage of 160 million monthly visitors from around the world on approximately 40,000 websites, offering a picture of the active user base of browsers and platforms at any moment.

Article Link: OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion Tops Lion as Most Popular Mac Operating System

[markfc]

Snow Leopard is still high because apple are dicks for dropping core duo support...

[KPOM]

Originally Posted by markfc

Snow Leopard is still high because apple are dicks for dropping core duo support...

I'm guessing it is the lack of support for PowerPC apps. People will older Macs continue to use older versions of the OS. However, I don't fault Apple for using OS upgrades to try to prod users to get new machines.

[Asclepio]

snow leopard still the best

[mrsir2009]

They should have put Tiger on that graph as well

[Xenomorph]

Originally Posted by mrsir2009

They should have put Tiger on that graph as well

Snow Leopard > Tiger > Mountain Lion

[Morshu9001]

Originally Posted by mrsir2009

They should have put Tiger on that graph as well

They should have just put every Mac OS X version with >.1% use or something. Why not do it if they have the data?

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Originally Posted by nostresshere

I consider myself above average on the computer smartness scale.

But, I can not tell you if I have a lion or a snow drift or a mountain OS. I think there have been two updates since I got this... and I have not ventured forth as my MBP works great.

I do have 10.6.8 - whatever that means.

Snow Leopard.

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Originally Posted by Frisco

Tiger is still the best OS X Operating System. Panther #2

Seriously? Do you use Tiger and Panther often?

[koban4max]

Originally Posted by Asclepio

snow leopard still the best

caveman.

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ML is POPULAR...not EFFECTIVE.

[Mattjeff]

Originally Posted by Asclepio

snow leopard still the best

Hell ya!

[HenryDJP]

Originally Posted by Asclepio

snow leopard still the best

That will always be subjective because IMO ML is the best version of Mac OS since when I started back on Mac OS 8.

[NOV]

Originally Posted by Asclepio

snow leopard still the best

Agreed. And I think it's a bloody shame that Apple didn't make Safari 6 availiable for SL.

[Mike MA]

Originally Posted by Asclepio

snow leopard still the best

I thought so as well, but with the latest updates ML seems worth the upgrade.

[maxwelltech]

LOL Lion is now less popular than Snow Leopard despite being newer. Kind of like the relationship between Windows Vista and XP.

[charlieegan3]

Hang in there olde snow leopard.

[Mainsail]

We just changed from Snow Leopard (Which I really liked) to Mountain Lion when I updated our 5 year old Mac with a 2012 Mac Mini. I was concerned, but the transition was very smooth. We had already updated to the latest version of Quicken and Office, so that definitely helped.

My wife is still getting used to the scrolling, but when I showed her that it could be easily reset in preferences, she decided to go ahead and adapt to the new convention.

I really like photo stream, airplay, reminders, and other features that come with the OS. All in all, we are pretty happy with ML.

[mrsir2009]

Originally Posted by maxwelltech

LOL Lion is now less popular than Snow Leopard despite being newer. Kind of like the relationship between Windows Vista and XP.

Probably because most of the people that upgraded to Lion would also upgrade to ML. Those that didn’t upgrade from SL to Lion will likely never upgrade until they get a new computer.

[DaveN]

Does anyone else here have a hard time remembering the order of the OSes? Off the top of my head, I can tell which is 10.8 by the look of the graph but 10.7 or 10.6?

[Obi-Wan Kubrick]

I'm still using Tiger and I love it. Although my iMac can only run up to Leopard.

[weing]

Since Lion was little more than a poor performing beta of Mountain Lion, one wonders why anyone would still be using it period.

[AppliedMicro]

If I could get Messages (incl. iMessage), Siri/Voice Dictation and maybe AirPlay mirroring (though I could do without) on a Quad-Core Mac mini, I'd be gladly running Snow Leopard.

It's still by far the most stable and compatible OS X release (despite the trouble with App Store versions of iLife/iWork, which cannot be installed on Snow Leopard).

[FSMBP]

Originally Posted by mrsir2009

Probably because most of the people that upgraded to Lion would also upgrade to ML. Those that didn’t upgrade from SL to Lion will likely never upgrade until they get a new computer.

That doesn't make any sense. You can make that same exact assumption going with Snow Leopard to Lion. And seeing as how Mountain Lion dropped compatibly for Core Duo Macs, those people with Lion couldn't update past to Mountain Lion (therefore, Lion's share wouldn't drop).

It just says a lot of Snow Leopard. It was Apple's first major release that's major feature was speed (which I made a thread of those forum about my update from Leopard to Snow Leopard - it was significantly faster). Apple needs to focus on speed and stability again.

[Andreu]

Originally Posted by mrsir2009

Probably because most of the people that upgraded to Lion would also upgrade to ML. Those that didn’t upgrade from SL to Lion will likely never upgrade until they get a new computer.

Well Lion users probably can't stand it anymore and had to upgrade to the next OS to get out of the mess they're in!

Ahem!.. I'm one of them...

I agree that the Only 'Upgrade' was Snow Leopard, more stable, faster speed, and an even smaller footprint!

Apple is losing their focus.. Stable and speedy OS is why people are moving to OSX.
making it more like iOS but clunky and slow is going to drive people away from Macs again.

[MacAddict1978]

Originally Posted by mrsir2009

Probably because most of the people that upgraded to Lion would also upgrade to ML. Those that didn’t upgrade from SL to Lion will likely never upgrade until they get a new computer.

This is very true... or in a lot of cases, bought Lion and reverted back to SL, which was my case. If you were near the bottom of the sys req, Lion ran like crap, even on machines newer than mine.

Really though, there hasn't been any dramatically compelling new features that I think SL people are missing out on. Most of them were just lipstick without substance. I'm only just now starting to feel the age of my machine in ways that have me planning to replace it next year.

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Originally Posted by apple-win

ML has more than 200 new features , its Safari is fun to use, I can resize ML windows from any corners (For SL, from lower-right corner only). Why ML is not better than SL (Yeah, Front Row is gone )

Seriously, if you don't like ML, I recommend you to try Windows 7 Ultimate version (no Windows 8). It's a very good OS . Maybe you'll jump ship.

As in my previous quote... it's lipstick, not features, or compelling features. SL has none of the bugs, performs better, is faster... Lion brought back the bloat that SL got rid of.

SL also doesn't have the identity crisis of Lion and ML.... "My GUI wants to be an iPad, but still wants to be a Mac. If only I had a touch screen..."

[Morshu9001]

Originally Posted by maxwelltech

LOL Lion is now less popular than Snow Leopard despite being newer. Kind of like the relationship between Windows Vista and XP.

It's because the Lion users went to Mountain Lion since they've already committed to using the OS that doesn't support Rosetta or older Macs.

I'd update past SL if the newer ones had @#$%ing Rosetta.

[Eidorian]

Originally Posted by HenryDJP

Microsoft also announced annual OS upgrades. Time for the dev's to move fast or let someone else come up with a better app.

Originally Posted by FSMBP

I know they did - hence my "oldschool Microsoft" in my original post.

It's happening, you could have prevented this!

http://fudzilla.com/home/item/29940-...umer-computing