If you recall, in July 2007, there was a story in Computerworld magazine that used cherry-picked data to make it look like Vista was a winner and the Mac OS was failing. The report said:

Windows Vista’s share of online users has increased every month this year, while rival Mac OS X — to which Vista has often been compared — has shown little, if any, growth, a metrics company reports. … Vista has grown its usage share each month since its release to consumers Jan. 30 … Mac OS X, meanwhile, accounted for 6.22 percent in January and hit its high point of 6.46 percent in May, but it slipped back to 6 percent in June.

This chart shows the cherry-picked data points:

As I pointed out, the Mac data was carefully chosen to give the impression of a declining market share, when in fact, historically, Mac market share had a tendency to flatline in Winter through mid-Summer, but to shoot up in late Summer through the beginning of Winter. I predicted in July of 2007 that the numbers would start to rise in “the next few months”–and I was right. In fact, the trend has just now begun to reach its full peak:

If it continues to match the trend, the market share has either peaked or will peak in February (perhaps March), after which it will stay level until July or August again. So far, my predictions have been almost spot-on; I predicted a rise to just over 8% by the beginning of 2008; while that is still possible, right now it is at just over 7.5%–not too far off, and certainly a hell of a lot more accurate than the paid prognosticator over at Computerworld.

I also pointed out that Vista sales were “increasing” only because (a) Vista started at zero, (b) is being sold by default with new computers, (c) and has a 90% market share to fulfill. In fact, relative to where it should have been, Vista sales were sagging, and people were asking that a 6-year-old OS (XP) be installed on their computers rather than a brand-new one (Vista), and that certainly held true. There is now a petition with nearly 80,000 signatures demanding that Microsoft abandon plans to stop selling Windows XP after this June, and with so many businesses refusing to switch to Vista, Microsoft is in the embarrassing position of actually having to consider keeping an old product alive and thereby admitting that their new product is a complete failure. Even the much-awaited Vista SP1, which was supposed to fix so many of the bugs in Vista and make it at least bearable, is failing to impress early testers. Analysts are now telling Microsoft that they should keep XP alive and on store shelves until 2009–when Vista’s successor is slated to arrive. (Though you shouldn’t bet the farm on that promise!)

All this probably explains why, as the Mac market share expands, Windows market share drops:

Ooo, and look! Microsoft’s market share is dropping exactly as Apple’s is increasing! What a coincidence!

Sure enough, Vista’s share expands only as new computers are sold to suckers who don’t know they can and should demand and get XP, so Vista’s market share continues to grow. But it’s anemic growth, at best: after one year on market shelves, Vista is only at a pitiful 12%. At this rate, it should reach 50% in only 3 more years, in March 2011–by which time, the next version of Windows will be two years overdue. How pathetic is that?

Following various trendlines, the Mac market share by early 2011 could be anywhere between 12% and 20%, probably landing somewhere in the middle of that. (My prediction: 15% by January 2011. That’s pretty realistic, and yet still allows for the possibility of the far-reaching prediction I made of 30% market share by 2015. But few trends stay that true for that long.)

Long story short: Me right, Computerworld dead wrong, Vista bites big hairy donkey balls. Not that this makes me Nostra-freakin’-damus (anyone could have crunched the numbers), but it might suggest that Computerworld should stop paying the hack they have on their payroll and instead mail his paycheck to me for writing this blog.

In a perfect world, that is.