Visitors to jkOnTheRun- more using OS X than Vista

GottaBeMobile ran an interesting post over the weekend that took a look at what browsers and OSes their site visitors are using.  We keep an eye on this here at jkOnTheRun too and today when I hit it up as usual one of the visitor stats knocked me out of my chair.  The surprising stat is the one that details what operating system visitors to jkOnTheRun are using.  The OS is detected automatically and while some might be surprised that far more of you are using Windows XP than Vista I was floored to see that there are more of you using OS X than Vista!

• Windows XP      55%
• Windows Vista   10%
• OS X                 14%

This blows me away although I don't know why.  Vista has been slow for many to adopt and we know that Macs are gaining users all the time.  Still it's pretty big news to me.

UPDATE:  Here's the entire OS graph that shows the breakdown of OS types that access jkOnTheRun. 

Comments

[Brian E]

I'm surprised at that too, James. I would have thought that Vista's improvements to the tablet UI would have swayed more of your readers - not to mention that it's getting downright difficult to get a new computer without it!

Do you have a breakdown on the other 21%? How many visitors are using Linux devices of one kind or another? (I'm posting from my N800.) What about the iPhone and iPod touch?

[Mr. Crash]

to take Brians comment a little further, I wonder just how many of your readers *are* using tablet PC's?

Maybe it's poll time? lol.

[Brian E]

That 12.7% number for Windows NT has to be wrong. I wonder what that is? User agent spoofing? Google bot?

[Benz145]

Does that Mac OS X figure include Tiger as well as Leopard?

[James Kendrick]

I suspect that the NT figure is for search engines but it's anybody's guess.

There's only one Mac OS X stat so it includes both flavors of the OS.

[Mike Whalen]

What about that lonely OS/2 dude? He's still carrying that torch! :-)

[Mike Whalen]

Just thought of something: It's quite possible that those Windows NT stats are due to user agents reports XP and Vista as NT 5 and NT 6. I have seen that before in server logs.

[Ralph Danielson]

I'm surprised that your surprised!!1 I've been a reader for less than a year but i can tell you that this is a blog about touchscreen PCs and portable gadgets from Apple. Maybe all of those XP users still think that this is a PC site lol!. And Macs have not been on the rise, we've always been here and manstream media is just starting to take us seriously. Thanks for all of your hard work Kevin! --RaD

[Dion Forster]

This is surprising in some ways, but not surprising in others.

My guess would be that the kind of person who views your great site is the kind of person who is looking for effective technology solutions. Let's be honest, OS X is a good all-rounder in that regard. It has the ease of use of XP (none of the complicated crud of Vista), yet it also has the security of Linux, and a look that surpasses Vista!

Now, if only the Apple 'Modbook' tablet came in a smaller than 10" form factor with a 6-8 hour battery....

As for me, I use OS X (main machine is a Macbook Pro 15", secondary Mac is a 223" iMac Intel, I also have an 'ultraportable 12" G4 1.5Ghz powerbook ;-). All the Macs also boot Ubuntu 7.10, and the Intel Macs also have XP running under Parallels. My main windows machine is a Sony Vaio UX 180P (XP), then a Sony Vaio U50 (TabletPC), my wife uses a Vaio T series with XP, and my daughter (who is 8 years old) uses an OLD Blueberry (toilet seat) iBook with Mac OS 10.3...

All of my machines run Safari as the main browser across all platforms.

I'm sad to say that I have not yet managed to get my wife or daughter to subscribe to JKONTHERUN's rss feed...

[Mike Whalen]

>>223" iMac Intel,

What kind of resolution does that monitor run? ;-)

[Lee]

Maybe it's due to the fact that (this site's owners excepted, of course) knowledgable mobile users would almost certainly choose XP over Vista.

Do you know how the first rule of real estate is location, location, location?

Well the first rule of of mobile devices is stability, stability, stability. Which is quickly followed by the rules of device drivers, device drivers, device drivers and I'm not an idiot so please don't ask me again if I realize what I am about to do (again and again and again).

All of which sums up why this mobile user would rather use Windows 98 before installing that piece of crap Vista on my mobile device. Do I need to spend 3+ hours at a clip mining the depths of Microsoft Knowledge Base Articles and obscure device boards to figure out why the hell I have a black screen when my mobile device wakes up, or my USB port suddenly won't work, or why I get a BSOD when I try to bring my computer out of hibernation? This is progress??

So as a dedicated mobile user, who thinks that James and Kevin do a yeoman's job in running this great site, I can't and won't install Vista on my mobile device or purchase a mobile device with Vista unless I can upgrade it to XP.

[William C Bonner]

Does the Google Reader report the end users OS, or does the OS get aggregated?

[Kingsley]

Personally I would take the findings with a grain of salt - there are so many confounding factors that it may not tell the whole truth. By the way, I have been using Vista on my ST5112 and P1620 with great success (actually all my computers - at least 6 of them are using Vista and variant of vista like Windows Server 2008).

[Ron]

Another idea to mull over may be that Vista has only been out for about a year. As a low-budget gadgety type myself, I tend to about 2 years behind the curve. My wallet is happier for it and the technology is more stable.

I'm guessing I'm not the only one. People may simply not have bought a machine with Vista installed yet.

[Jose]

What about Blackberry visitors?? Is that visit tracked?

[thoughtfix]

I just checked mine. 67% XP, 18% Linux, and the rest are scattered.

[James Kendrick]

I suspect that Blackberry shows up as an "unknown".

[Rob]

How about the iphone, under the OS X statistic?

[Oliver]

Apologies if this was mentioned somewhere, but for what time frame are those numbers? Last week or month? Life of the site?

[slappy]

Surprising indeed. I wonder what the numbers were previously? Before Vista was out. Also be nice to come back again next year to see how the numbers have changed, since every PC ships with Vista, usually, I'm sure the numbers will go up for Vista.

[John in Norway]

What about the time I looked at your site on my Nokia N95?

[Kevin C. Tofel]

John, that was YOU? We were wondering about that one N95 hit. ;)

Here's the OS and browser stats for jkOTR from August of last year: http://www.jkontherun.com/2007/08/the-changing-fa.html. Interesting trend from 2004 to 2007 to now.

[Stephen]

Actually I often look at your site using my Nokia N95 - say at least once a week!

Rest of the time I use XP or Ipod Touch

[kamal]

I suspect the windows mobile shows up as windows ce as most of the time, I browse ur website via one of my many windows mobile devices

[Dave]

Ohhh, no no no, sorry guys! The OSX stats are just from me, I have a tendency to keep hitting that refresh button until I find a new post..

All (somewhat lame, apologies) jokes aside, I wonder if all those RSS programs send out proper information, and if your stats application actually catches all that. I think a whole lot more people use RSS readers to keep an eye out on your site (myself included).

[Xavier]

James,

Very interesting stats and I'm very surprised by them too.

I ran a similar report for Notebooks.com and you have about 50% more Mac users than us.

http://www.notebooks.com/2008/03/25/notebookscom-users-still-love-windows-xp/