July 23rd, 2005
Are the OS wars a three-horse race?
A JupiterMedia study, reported on by ComputerWorld, shows the Mac OS X operating system taking some significant hunks of market share in mid-sized and large businesses.
While the survey found 17-21% of desktops and 9-14% of server users had Macs, it doesn’t mean that OS X has complete control of those shops, or that their market share is that high.
Still, the numbers represent real improvement.
Mac booster Joe Wilcox authored the study, and noted on his blog recently that Macintosh obituaries are awfully common, but always wrong.
The question is, how should open source advocates react to these numbers?
Personally, I’m quite happy with them. OS X does have a version of Free BSD at its base. The Mac is taking share from Unix, from Windows, and even from Linux, Wilcox writes, and his report shows the installed base of Windows actually falling.
Honest competition is a good thing.
The lesson, I feel, is that if we can all concentrate on making our own stuff better rather than playing FUD games in a bid to prove the other guy’s stuff isn’t worth looking at, we’ll all be better off.
Dana Blankenhorn has been a business journalist for 30 years, a tech freelancer since 1983. You can follow Dana on Twitter. See his full profile and disclosure of his industry affiliations.
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