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Apple has taken a small bite out of Windows. Well, not really. Apple has moved up in market share to 6.6% based on a not-so-formal analysis from Net Applications. I used to always refer to Mac users as part of the 3%. For years I always saw Mac users as 3% and Windows as virtually 100%, but not exactly. Turns out, based on the analysis of internet usage tracking the OS that was used to access the sites that Net Applications has tracking code implemented on Apple has moved up on the charts significantly.

Though, the study is informal, it is based on about a half million sites with a total of about 1 billion page views per month. So, informal, yes, but representative of fact, probably pretty close. Now that Apple has gained in market share, one would assume that Windows went down, but it didn’t. Turns out that Windows has stood strong at 91%. It is true that Apple has gained a share, if you want to listen to these numbers, but Windows has not dropped, therefore, the title of this article is false.

The article goes on to predict that Apple could gain up to 15% share potentially in 5 years. I see this as being possible, but not a guarantee. With iPods and iTunes becoming mainstream, people are accepting Apple products and getting comfortable with the ease of use. However, with prices still being through the roof compared to PCs on the market, the mainstream may just decide that even though they are using Apple products, the products are compatible with PCs, so why switch. It makes sense, Apple is sneaking into peoples’ homes but isn’t really driving a convincing campaign to capture the computer market.

I guess the real question is, does it matter what OS people use? I don’t think so. Now that everything is moving towards being web-based, the OS that people use will soon become irrelevant. As long as you have a web browser, you will soon be able to do absolutely all computer tasks online, including storage. With this being the movement, we may see less of an OS struggle and more of a browser struggle. This is when I predict we will see Google enter the arena of web browsers. They are already building plenty of desktop applications that are solely web-based so once they perfect that, we will surely see a gBrowser follow.

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