Related Articles

- OS X 10.6.2 rumored to drop Atom CPU support

- Snow Leopard bug eats user account data

- In its first month, Snow Leopard sees rapid adoption

- Developer sees 50-percent performance improvements in Snow Leopard

- Apple posts 10.6.1, security fixes

- Intego looks at Snow Leopard's Malware

- Wiki Tracks Snow Leopard Compatibility

- Snow Leopard looks to add malware protection

- Snow Leopard ships the 28th, pre-order now available at Apple

- OS X 10.6 dropping early?

November was a very good month for world except for Redmond as the share of web traffic generated by Windows users fell below 90%. Last month, Net Applications data marked the passage of another milestone—combined OS X and Mobile OS X market share now exceeds 10%.

As you can see, Windows share fell nearly a full percentage point:

• Windows—88.68% (89.62%)
• Mac OS—9.63 (8.87)
• Linux—0.85 (0.83)
• iPhone—0.44 (0.37)

Of course, the back story of 2008 is the rise of the iPod touch, which posted 300% growth over the final month of the year.

[Click through to continue]

Another 8+ percent and we find out if Google was right about browser market critical mass

The gods' holiday blessings are also evident in December browser data. Yes, of course, Firefox continued to add share and Internet Explorer continue to lose it.

01 Internet Explorer—68.15% (69.77%)
02 Firefox—21.34 (20.78)
03 Safari—7.93 (7.13)
04 Chrome—1.04 (0.83)
05 Opera—0.71 (0.71)

Also, Google's Chrome has popped above 1% for the first time, a milestone along the road to pushing Internet Explorer below 60%. That is, the search giant has said it believes web designers and architects will abandon IE as the de facto standard once that number breached.

Another interesting nugget from the December data is the apparent relative decline of Firefox among Mac users. Previously, it was believed that one-in-four preferred the open-source browser.

Apple Certified Refurbished iPod touch Department at the Apple Online Store.

Reader Comments

i used firefox on my mac exclusively until just a few months ago. it feels like safari uses fewer resources than firefox. but maybe that's just my imagination. i now use firefox when something won't load properly in safari. safari user here Posted by Guest Poster #1 on 01/02/09 2:30 PM Firefox has turned into a slug on both Mac and Windows - it loads so slowly in the first place that I can literally load Safari at the same time, do a Google search and then get where I want to go before Firefox even comes up - all this on a brand new 3.2GHz 8 core Mac Pro.... My lowly (but new) Sony Vaio is the same way with Firefox vs. IE. Frankly, I'm glad people are stepping away from Microsoft on one hand but I'm much more pleased with IE7 than Firefox these days. I prefer Safari hands-down over either one but news that Firefox is gaining ground doesn't really do much for me, the experience just isn't close to what it used to be. Firefox used to be about security - these days the speed issues have been so bad for me that I've more or less stopped using it. As far as Chrome goes, well, yeah..... better luck next time, I see no compelling reason to use it. Agreed.... Posted by RobertWagner on 01/02/09 2:37 PM I don't get any of those problems either of you 2 get. Firefox is still the fastest best browser for OS X, IMO. Safari looks really good, but it is a dinosaur on my Mac Posted by xDylanx on 01/02/09 3:51 PM I quite happily use both. M Posted by M Sharp on 01/02/09 6:41 PM I have been using Camino 2.0 beta1 and has improved alot.. I would say the next step up from Safari... and still fast. Posted by Guest Poster #5 on 01/02/09 8:31 PM I have been using Camino 2.0 beta1 and has improved alot.. I would say the next step up from Safari... and still fast. Posted by Guest Poster #5 on 01/02/09 8:32 PM I have been using Camino 2.0 beta1 and has improved alot.. I would say the next step up from Safari... and still fast. Posted by Guest Poster #5 on 01/02/09 8:33 PM Use opera. It's fast, and it's where firefox got all their ideas for features anyway. Opera FTW Posted by Clay Garland on 01/02/09 8:40 PM when i got my mac i used safari faithfully, even though it wont load some pages properly that would load fine in firefox on my pc. after 8 months or so i got the dev copy of safari 4, saw these problems werent fixed, fed up of switching to my pc to browse certain pages, i installed firefox. i dont see how apple can claim it as the best browser if you cant even do a lot of online billing sites and tech support pages, which i would assume would be the majority of sites used by the basic home user. Posted by Guest Poster #9 on 01/03/09 8:10 AM I don't understand those who claim FF is as fast as Safari on the Mac. This simply isn't the case on any machine I use, from a PMG5 2x2 and all manner of Intel machines over the past two years. In the time it takes FF to just launch, I can launch safari and have a web page displayed. As for compatibility, I've not found a single site that doesn't display acceptably with Safari 3.x Yes I do online bill pay, banking and other advanced stuff. The only Mac users I run in to that use FF are recent windows converts. I show them how fast Safari is and they stop using FF, it happens at least twice a week for me. Safari is great Posted by Gerard on 01/03/09 1:41 PM Was not able to use the car configurator on volvocars with safari. But that has now been fixed in the new version (of the Volvo configurator). Also a map zoom feature at herold.at has been resolved now by herold. Those wre the 2 sites I used to use FF. Posted by GH on 01/04/09 3:04 AM I LOVE Opera: - single-click bookmarks along the left side - Remembers multiple accounts for same site - easy zoom - remembers tabs when restarting - great GUI - VERY fast - built-in torrent downloader need I say more? Opera is the way to go Posted by Guest Poster #11 on 01/04/09 4:12 AM

Name Subject Comments Reload Image