Mac's Record Market Share Expected to Double, Safari 'Solid Third' in Browsers, and More

Top news this week: Apple is approaching 8% market share, according to WebApplications, and Safari has a solid hold on third place in the browser sweepstakes. On top of that, Gartner expects Apple to double the Mac's market share by the end of 2011.

Our logs at Low End Mac, as published yesterday, show over half our readers visit on Macs, 44% on Windows, 35% using Firefox, 32% with Safari, and just under 25% on Internet Explorer. Of course we'd expect Windows- and Linux-oriented websites to be skewed from the norm as well.

PowerBook, iBook, MacBook, and other portable computing is covered in The 'Book Review. iPod, iPhone, and Apple TV news is covered in The iNews Review.

All prices are in US dollars unless otherwise noted.

News & Opinion

• Mac Hits Record Market Share
• OS X Closing on 8% Market Share
• Safari a 'Solid Third' in Browser Market Share
• Apple to Double Market Share in 3 Years?
• The Future Is Apple, Open Source, and Green

Reviews

• The Fastest Mac Ever

Software

• SuperDuper! 2.5 Gains Leopard Compatibility

Desktop Mac Deals

News & Opinion

Mac Hits Record Market Share

DailyTech's Jason Mick reports:

"Windows may be king, but Apple is trying to out-tortoise the hare

"Apple's OS X comes nowhere near Windows in market share, but the reality is, throughout the last couple years OS X has slowly been gaining traction. It still has many more years to go at this rate before ever evening the OS race, but this does not detract from the fact that it is making progress, largely at Microsoft's expense."

Link: Mac OS X Hits Record Marketshare, Continues to Chip at Windows Lead

OS X Closing on 8% Market Share

Market Research firm WebApplications reports that the Mac OS platform (green in this chart) enjoyed a 7.57% market share in January, with the iPhone accounting for another 0.13%.

Windows (blue) still has a 91.46% share, while Linux (red) trails distantly at 0.67%.

Link: Operating System Market Share for January, 2008

Safari a 'Solid Third' in Browser Market Share

Market Research firm WebApplications reports that only three Web browsers had a market share above 1% in January, with Apple's Safari (red) at 5.82% behind Firefox (green) and Microsoft's still-dominant but fading Internet Explorer (blue).

Link: Browser Market Share for January, 2008

Apple to Double Market Share in 3 Years?

ZD Net's Liam Tung reports:

"By 2011, Apple will double its market share in the US and Europe - a trend that will also mean an onslaught of Apple devices invading corporate networks, new research predicts.

"According to analyst firm Gartner, Apple's rapid growth over recent years will see the company take nine percent of the US and Western European personal computing market within the next three years."

Link: Apple to Double Its Market Share in Three Years?

The Future Is Apple, Open Source, and Green

Computerworld UK's Jon Brodkin reports:

"Open source, Apple computers, green technology, the rise of users and the proliferation of three-dimensional printing are among the hot trends IT shops should look out for in the next few years, according to Gartner.

"The analyst firm yesterday (31 January) highlighted 10 key predictions of developments that will affect IT and business users in 2008 and beyond....

"Apple will double its market share for computers in the United States and Western Europe by 2011. 'Apple's gains in computer market share reflect as much on the failures of the rest of the industry as on Apple's success,' Gartner says. A focus on interoperability between the iPod, iMac and other devices is one of the keys for Apple.

"* By 2012, half of all workers will use devices other than their laptops when they travel. 'Even though notebooks continue to shrink in size and weight, travelling workers lament the weight and inconvenience of carrying them on their trips,' Gartner states."

Link: Gartner: The Future Is Apple, Open Source and Green

Reviews

The Fastest Mac Ever

Macworld's James Galbraith reports:

"We've published our review of the standard configuration of Apple's recently revised Mac Pro line, but that's not the final chapter in the Mac Pro story.

"In addition to the eight-core, 2.8 GHz model we reviewed, Apple offers three other build-to-order configurations. We've already tested the 3 GHz, eight-core Mac Pro and the 2.8 GHz, four-core system, and we finally received the last piece of the Mac Pro puzzle - an eight-core 3.2 GHz model. As you might expect, this machine, powered by a pair of 3.2 GHz 4-core Xeon processors, is the fastest Mac we've tested yet."

Link: The Fastest Mac Ever

Software

SuperDuper! 2.5 Gains Leopard Compatibility

PR: SuperDuper is a wildly acclaimed program that makes recovery painless, because it makes creating a fully bootable backup painless. Its incredibly clear, friendly interface is understandable, easy to use, and SuperDuper's built-in scheduler makes it trivial to back up automatically. It's the perfect complement to Time Machine under Leopard, allowing you to store a bootable backup alongside your Time Machine volume - and it runs beautifully on both Intel and Power PC Macs!

SuperDuper's interface confirms all your actions in simple, clear language to ensure that the end result is exactly what you intended. Take a look, and click for additional screen shots!

We all know that using the Macintosh is usually a trouble-free experience.

Except when it's not. Like when:

• Your hard drive starts making that horrible clicking noise that signals an imminent meltdown
• A momentary lapse of coordination causes your PowerBook to take a dirt nap
• The system suddenly fails to boot
• Your most important day-to-day application isn't working with the system update you just applied
• The new driver you just updated is causing your Macintosh to crash
• That lousy software you just tried didn't come with an uninstaller, and scattered files all over your drive
• You need to restore a stable copy of your system, but don't want to lose what you've been working on
• You need to test new versions of the operating system with production data you can't afford to lose

SuperDuper is the most advanced, yet easy to use disk copying program available for OS X. It can, of course, make a full backup, or "clone" - in moments, you can completely duplicate your boot drive to another drive, partition, or image file. In even less time, you can update an existing clone with the latest data: use Smart Update and, minutes later, your backup is completely up to date!

The latest version of SuperDuper! can store a bootable backup alongside Time Machine backups, copy Time Machine backups to other drives, run scheduled copies on demand, and polishes and improves many other aspects as well. (A full list can be found by selecting Help > Revision History.)

SuperDuper! remains a Universal Application, and works beautifully on Intel and Power PC based Macs.

It's a free update for users: existing copies of SuperDuper! will auto-upgrade the next time they are run

Give SuperDuper a workout on your own system. Clone to your heart's content - for free. See what else is possible. When you're convinced that SuperDuper is a terrific solution - and a great value at $27.95 - you can register right from the application and start using its advanced features immediately.

Please note that SuperDuper! is not designed to back up to CDs, DVDs or Tape, and needs a location (other than the boot volume) to store the backup - typically a volume on an internal or external (FireWire) drive. SuperDuper! only copies HFS+ (Mac-native) volumes.

Note also that USB drives do not allow booting Power PC based Macintoshes under any version of Mac OS X: this is not a SuperDuper! limitation, but one of the OS. If you would like to boot from a backup stored on an external drive, and have a Power PC based Mac, please purchase a Mac compatible FireWire drive. Intel Mac users can boot from either USB or FireWire drives.

New in version 2.5:

• Full Leopard support
• Can store a bootable backup side-by-side with a Time Machine backup on a single volume
• Can copy Time Machine backup volumes to other drive when you need more space (or want to back up your archived data)
• "Run Now" button for scheduled copies
• Automatic preservation of any custom icon on the destination volume
• Improved Spotlight handling
• Performance and other improvements
• Of course, the new SuperDuper 2.5 still improves on the acclaimed original in many ways, including:
• The ability to easily schedule backups
• Additional imaging options
• More control over shutdown
• Better AppleScript support

System requirements: Mac OS X 10.4 or later, including Leopard. (Optical and tape drives are not supported.)

System support: PPC/Intel

$27.95 Shareware - You can download SuperDuper! v2.5 right now and back up and clone your drives for free - forever! - Buy to unlock scheduling, Smart Update (which saves a lot of time), Sandboxes, scripting and more.

Link: SuperDuper!

Desktop Mac Deals

Low End Mac updates the following price trackers once or twice a month:

• Intel iMac deals
• iMac G5 deals
• iMac G4 deals
• iMac G3 deals
• eMac deals
• Mac mini deals
• Mac Pro deals
• Power Mac G5 deals
• Power Mac G4 deals
• Power Mac G3 deals

For more deals on current and discontinued notebook models, see our MacBook, MacBook Air, 15" MacBook Pro, 17" MacBook Pro, 12" PowerBook G4, 15" PowerBook G4, 17" PowerBook G4, titanium PowerBook G4, iBook G4, PowerBook G3, and iBook G3 deals.

We also track iPod touch, iPod classic, iPod nano, and iPod shuffle deals.