Having read of J Dvorak's latest clueless rant via the essential MWJ, we shuddered to think we had to waste time rebutting his stupidity. Someone has to, right? Though 1000 other bloggers had the same impulse.
Luckily, BackupBrain was one, so I'll just link to Dori Smith's analysis...
I thought about doing a detailed rebuttal about John Dvorak's latest turd, Grim Macintosh Market Share Forebodes Crisis, but I couldn't get past the second sentence before I realized that a thorough debunking would take more time than I have. So, herewith, I'll debunk just the first two sentences: The Mac platform is essentially stagnant.Compared to what? Longhorn, which hasn't shipped yet? Or Windows XP, which came out several years ago?
That becomes obvious when you look at the declining market share numbers—not from research firms, but from the W3C, which monitors online activity.
Ah, he's talking about market share, not the OS itself. Nice to have that cleared up.
But wait? The W3C puts out OS market share numbers? The highly-regarded World Wide Web Consortium, run by Sir Tim Berners Lee?
Nope, Dvorak's talking about an entirely different, unrelated “W3C”—or more accurately, W3 Schools, an online “e-learning portal.” W3 Schools is a online, ad-based reference and tutorial site. And yes, they have some current statistics that cover browser usage, operating systems and screen resolution. But the W3C it ain't.
Oh, and those statistics? They show that the number of Mac users online (or at least visiting the W3 Schools site) has gone from 1.8% in March 2003 to 2.3% in December 2003 to 2.7% in December 2004. But noting that the number is increasing would completely destroy Dvorak's premise, so he doesn't mention it.
I'm shocked, shocked!
And, marketshare is a fairly useless metric anyway: does this alter much other than giving some idea-less pundits grist for their column-mills?
Here is a graph illustrating the operating systems of the last 1000 visitors to B12 Partners...
useless info-porn
