Edible Apple

As Windows 8 sales figures continue to disappoint, the same can’t be said for Apple’s venerable succession of OS X releases. With each new OS X release, more and more folks are upgrading with greater frequency. And with consumers able to upgrade directly via the Mac App Store, the entire process has never been easier.

That said, new data released by Net Applications reveals that the majority of web traffic from Apple computers is now coming from OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion. This marks the first time that Mountain Lion web traffic has exceeded OS X Lion.

Snow Leopard continues to be very tenacious, with a 29 percent share of Mac web traffic, which makes it the second-most frequently used version of OS X over even Lion. But Mountain Lion’s growth is still impressive, and it seems to be attracting users faster than Lion was ever able to. Lion took until May 2012 to overcome Snow Leopard in terms of share of web traffic as measured by Net Applications, meaning it required nearly 10 months to unseat Snow Leopard as the dominant Mac OS. By contrast, Mountain Lion took around five months to reach the top spot, or about half the time.

Specifically, the data indicates that Mountain Lion accounted for 32.13% of all Macintosh-based web traffic during the covered time frame, compared to 29.28% for OS X Lion and 28.34% for Snow Leopard. And in case you’re curious, the web share for OS X Leopard and OS X Tiger (Tiger!!) check in at 7.93% and 1.94% respectively.

The rapid upgrade dynamic exhibited by Mac owners is something Microsoft can only dream of. What’s more, the fact that many Windows owners are content to stay with their current OS – even if it’s Windows XP! – is actually a significant problem for Microsoft as it detracts from the overall Windows ecosystem. Apple, in contrast, enjoys a position where its user-base can reliably be counted on to upgrade to the latest and greatest version of OS X.

via Techcrunch