MacIntel Begins to Consign Mac PowerPC to History


A snapshot of MacIntel and Mac-PowerPC usage caught our eye over at MacBidouille (the English-language site is Hardmac. Last June, for the first time, visits to MacBidouille on Intel Macs were on the verge of surpassing those of PowerPCs.

Now it's at 52.5% for MacIntel and 47.5% for PowerPC. Certainly, with the replacement cycle, you would expect this to occur, although perhaps not so rapidly. One explanation is that Apple is selling Macs at a rate (a predicted 2.2 million for this quarter) not seen since the glory days of the early 1990s, when the Mac took over 10% market share (and early PowerBooks owned their segment).

The last desktop G4 and G5 iMacs were sold early 2006, while PowerBook G4s lasted until around April-May 2006. In another 18 months, PowerPC Macs will probably comprise only about 25% of web-connected computers. The number of OS 9 computers now in use and on-line, of course, has plummeted to a miniscule amount in the last 5-6 years (although I still use my PowerBook G3 for accessing the web occasionally).

For the record, about 52% of all site visitors to MacBidouille (including Windows) were using Mac/Safari, with just under 19% using Mac/FireFox.

Two questions: 1. How many IGM readers are using PowerPC v. Intel? 2. How many are still using OS 9 with any regularity to access the web?