OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion Tops Lion as Most Popular Mac Operating System

According to Web analytics firm Net Applications (via Computerworld) Apple's OS X Mountain Lion is now the most popular version of OS X, just five months after its July 2012 release.

During December, 32% of all Macs that went online were running OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion. Usage of Lion, the previous iteration of OS X, dropped from 30% to 28%.

os x mountain lion share dec12
OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard, first introduced in 2009, remains widely used despite its age. As of December 31, it still represented 29% of Mac Internet usage. Snow Leopard remains for sale on the online Apple Store and has been lauded for its stability.

Easily accessible and reasonably priced upgrades have always enticed Apple users to embrace operating system updates. Apple famously boasted about selling a million copies of OS X 10.7 Lion in its first day of availability, and Mountain Lion also saw rapid adoption numbers.

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Net Applications collects its data by tracking browser usage of 160 million monthly visitors from around the world on approximately 40,000 websites, offering a picture of the active user base of browsers and platforms at any moment.

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Top Rated Comments

Asclepio Avatar
161 months ago
snow leopard still the best
Score: 62 Votes (Like | Disagree)
markfc Avatar
161 months ago
Snow Leopard is still high because apple are dicks for dropping core duo support...
Score: 41 Votes (Like | Disagree)
FSMBP Avatar
161 months ago
Not a fan of this yearly desktop OS update. Devs are taking long to update their apps for the latest OS; by the time they do update, Apple announces a beta of the next version of OS X. (I'm not blaming Devs - I can't imagine them wanting to support multiple OSes within such a short timeframe)

I'm not saying pull a oldschool Microsoft and go 5 years between releases, but a 18-24 month schedule seems easier on consumers and Devs.
Score: 38 Votes (Like | Disagree)
tigres Avatar
161 months ago
Wonder how many Lion users would have stuck with Snow Leopard if it had iCloud support.

Score: 23 Votes (Like | Disagree)
charlieegan3 Avatar
161 months ago
Hang in there olde snow leopard.
Score: 23 Votes (Like | Disagree)
maxwelltech Avatar
161 months ago
LOL Lion is now less popular than Snow Leopard despite being newer. Kind of like the relationship between Windows Vista and XP.
Score: 22 Votes (Like | Disagree)