alan little's weblog

more on browsers

24th July 2003 permanent link

Tim Bray : "the proportion of IE users here at ongoing recently crossed the 60% line, heading down". And a recent user survey at arstechnica had 41% of respondents using OS X or Linux as their "primary OS".

I'm a little sceptical of the arstechnica result because it came from a user survey, and I strongly suspect that people (such as Mac and Linux users) who see themselves as a righteous and oppressed minority are likely to over-report themselves in surveys. Vote early, vote often. Nevertheless, arstechnica is a hard-core technical site and therefore likely to attract a high proportion of Linux users. And it has a good Macintosh discussion forum that presumably also attracts technically aware OS X users. As Tim O'Reilly pointed out last year, technical people who appreciate the benefits of life on a stable Unix platform with a good user interface are flocking to OS X. (At least, those technical people who have enough money to believe that the benefits outweigh the drawback of overpriced, underpowered hardware. Until next month, at any rate)

I'm sure Tim Bray's readers are also a fair sample of where the technical leading edge is going. alanlittle.org, on the other hand, can make no such claim. Over 90% of our yoga-and-photography audience still uses Internet Explorer.

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