August growth puts Windows 8 back on track

Windows 8 and Internet Explorer 11 both perk up after a couple of months in the doldrums

Read the whole story

 

[Uxorious]

"Back to School" sales anyone???

 

[apockoffork]

I wonder what the cause of the ever increasing number of people on outdated versions of chrome is? Chrome makes it really hard not to update so I'm amazed so many people are still sitting on older versions. I guess the same goes for the other browsers as well.

 

[AdamM]

apockoffork[/url]":3ranwemj]I wonder what the cause of the ever increasing number of people on outdated versions of chrome is? Chrome makes it really hard not to update so I'm amazed so many people are still sitting on older versions. I guess the same goes for the other browsers as well.

IT policies most likely.

 

[tiggers]

Uxorious[/url]":1rtuoktw]"Back to School" sales anyone???

My thoughts exactly. I know one little girl personally who benefited from those sales when she "broke" her hand-me-down first gen Nexus 7 over the summer.
*shrugs8 she needed a keyboard case anyway

 

[Oz7]

Too bad FF is at 15%. I don't mind the new interface but I think it has been a while since they have done something really innovative with the user experience: Tab management, bookmarks are two areas that could use some work. The UI is still way better than IE, and it does not nag me to "sign in" like Chrome.

 

[Oz7]

When did ars stop reporting browser share of ars site visitors? I found the contrast interesting.

 

[locater16]

Oz7[/url]":17y1e5vj]Too bad FF is at 15%. I don't mind the new interface but I think it has been a while since they have done something really innovative with the user experience: Tab management, bookmarks are two areas that could use some work. The UI is still way better than IE, and it does not nag me to "sign in" like Chrome.

I do mind the new interface, and it looks like I'm not the only one (looking at the trend).

Chrome is faster, has a better battery life, and with the interface change FF just feels like "shitty chrome" now, so might as well use the real thing.

 

[kripkenstein]

AdamM[/url]"p8bv7ak]

apockoffork[/url]"p8bv7ak]I wonder what the cause of the ever increasing number of people on outdated versions of chrome is? Chrome makes it really hard not to update so I'm amazed so many people are still sitting on older versions. I guess the same goes for the other browsers as well.

IT policies most likely.

Could be. Still, there are roughly 1/3 of chrome users now on an obsolete version - is it possible so many chrome users are in large corporations with strict IT policies? That seems high, but I'm just guessing.

 

[Static and Noise]

locater16[/url]":2qjxmwa9]

Oz7[/url]":2qjxmwa9]Too bad FF is at 15%. I don't mind the new interface but I think it has been a while since they have done something really innovative with the user experience: Tab management, bookmarks are two areas that could use some work. The UI is still way better than IE, and it does not nag me to "sign in" like Chrome.

I do mind the new interface, and it looks like I'm not the only one (looking at the trend).

Chrome is faster, has a better battery life, and with the interface change FF just feels like "shitty chrome" now, so might as well use the real thing.

Classic Theme Restorer fixes much of Australis. And judging by FF:s history, some of the bad moves done with Australis (decreased UI customizability mainly) will be undone or made optional in the future. Not the first time Mozilla has said "This is how it'll be now!" only to quietly backtrack (partially) later. Pretty sure they'll at least backtrack on the toolbars mess.

 

[JButler]

Windows 8.1 was up 0.53 points, and Windows 8 was up 0.36 points. The losses of July have been more than offset...

I doubt W8 and W8.1 shares actually went down for July. That was probably just due to statistical noise or a change in the way they measure.

 

[goddog]

apockoffork[/url]":3lzdnp6t]I wonder what the cause of the ever increasing number of people on outdated versions of chrome is? Chrome makes it really hard not to update so I'm amazed so many people are still sitting on older versions. I guess the same goes for the other browsers as well.

they drop support for your OS or hardware config, the laptop i am typing this on i get warnings that support will end soon* i only use chrome for my chromecast.... firefox is the prime browser.

osx 10.6.8 ... other pcs range from xp -8.1 various *nix

 

[Static and Noise]

JButler[/url]":2jloj9p6]

Windows 8.1 was up 0.53 points, and Windows 8 was up 0.36 points. The losses of July have been more than offset...

I doubt W8 and W8.1 shares actually went down for July. That was probably just due to statistical noise or a change in the way they measure.

Or a sign that people used their home Win7 computers during the vacation, and not office XP-upgraded/new Win8/8.1 ones?

Edit: Since IE was down and Chrome up in July, and those numbers have been reversed too in August, that seems likely.

 

[Abhi Beckert]

apockoffork[/url]":3ees7kax]I wonder what the cause of the ever increasing number of people on outdated versions of chrome is? Chrome makes it really hard not to update so I'm amazed so many people are still sitting on older versions. I guess the same goes for the other browsers as well.

I don't use chrome and do not want it randomly downloading shit in the background without asking for permission first.

But I need to have it installed, because I'm a web developer.

Since there's no way to disable automatic updates I've firewalled Chrome's access to the update server and every couple of months I go manually download updates.

I'm sure the world is full of sysadmins who feel the same way about automatic updates as I do.

Could be. Still, there are roughly 1/3 of chrome users now on an obsolete version - is it possible so many chrome users are in large corporations with strict IT policies? That seems high, but I'm just guessing.

No. 1/3rd of *chrome traffic* is from an obsolete version. Not 1/3rd of users. There is a big difference between those two.

Also I suspect Chrome has unusually high marketshare among people who use chrome in an office environment where the version of IE is dictated by the ActiveX controls they need as part of their job. These are the type of users who would be at IT's mercy about chrome updates.

 

[Yuhong bao]

Since there's no way to disable automatic updates

https://support.google.com/installer/an ... 4#Policies

 

[Abhi Beckert]

Yuhong bao[/url]":6953x34q]

Since there's no way to disable automatic updates

https://support.google.com/installer/an ... 4#Policies

"if a device is not joined to an Active Directory domain, and if this policy has been set to 0 or to a value greater than 77 hours, this setting will not be honored"

My device is not joined to active directory, and I don't want chrome doing anything every 77 hours.

I want to be notified, when I launch chrome, which is about twice a month, that I have an outdated version.

There is no security risk, I'm not browsing the public internet with Chrome. Keeping up to date is a waste of resources. I'm often connected to the internet via an LTE internet connection where I have to pay a lot of money for a small amount of data.

 

[Yuhong bao]

Abhi Beckert[/url]":2724f0z9]

Yuhong bao[/url]":2724f0z9]

Since there's no way to disable automatic updates

https://support.google.com/installer/an ... 4#Policies

"if a device is not joined to an Active Directory domain, and if this policy has been set to 0 or to a value greater than 77 hours, this setting will not be honored"

My device is not joined to active directory, and I don't want chrome doing anything every 77 hours.

Read the text below, there is even a manual option.

 

[Abhi Beckert]

Yuhong bao[/url]":2g6wdevi]

Abhi Beckert[/url]":2g6wdevi]

Yuhong bao[/url]":2g6wdevi]

Since there's no way to disable automatic updates

https://support.google.com/installer/an ... 4#Policies

"if a device is not joined to an Active Directory domain, and if this policy has been set to 0 or to a value greater than 77 hours, this setting will not be honored"

My device is not joined to active directory, and I don't want chrome doing anything every 77 hours.

Read the text below, there is even a manual option.

It's also not compatible with macs.

 

[Stickmansam]

Using Chrome on my personal PC

I ran into update issues which kept me on v35 every since it updated to v35. Automatic and manual updates both failed due to error 3. I ended up resintalling to v37 64bit but still have the update error pop up with the entirely new clean install.

Google's automatic update is only good when it actually works.

 

[Mitlov]

Zorro[/url]":30c2nw91]Can we officially call Windows 8 a failure now?

Windows 7 and XP are 75.1% of all OSes in use by those graphs.

You can call it a failure because it failed to meet Microsoft's expectations, and because its name has been damaged by bad press to the point where people I know who know nothing about various versions of Windows tell me that Windows 8 is bad because they heard that somewhere. And I'm saying this as someone who really likes Win8.1 Update 1.

But you can't call it a failure for the reasons you state. Of course a two-year-old OS is going to have smaller market share than a 13-year-old OS and a five-year-old OS when most people have PC replacement cycles far longer than two years (I'm betting the average PC replacement cycle is about 5 years nowadays).

 

[howdystranger]

I've been curious for ages what the Firefox for mobile usage rate is. I guess it probably makes up quite a reasonably percentage share of that 3.32% "other" category?

 

[orangpelupa]

Chrome have update issue since years. I got it on my laptop. But not in my pc and tablet. Basically it will refuse update with misteriois error number.

 

[Nait]

Hopefully they will start to include Chrome 64 bit as well seeing as it is opt in only, at least at the moment. Speaking of which, is there any chance of a review of the browser to check if the performance and stability claims are accurate?

 

[Stickmansam]

Nait[/url]":yuki2ocm]Hopefully they will start to include Chrome 64 bit as well seeing as it is opt in only, at least at the moment. Speaking of which, is there any chance of a review of the browser to check if the performance and stability claims are accurate?

Haven't done any performance testing but seems stable enough for me with over 90 tabs

 

[fulgu]

Zorro[/url]":16vea8n9]Can we officially call Windows 8 a failure now?

Windows 7 and XP are 75.1% of all OSes in use by those graphs.

I honestly don't think we can... Because of two reasons:
1. almost 15% of the huge PC market in just two years is nothing to sneeze at -> 100s of millions
2. no matter how good Win8 might have been, it had to compete with a successful Win7 -> less sales

MS for sure knows and understands the tick-tock cadence of their OS, and this is why they deliberately try new things with every other OS version, which anyway wouldn't sell too well no matter how good they are (because economics). This started all the way back with Windows 2000 - which was a great leap forward, technically, but never saw large scale commercial success. It was, however, the basis for XP, just like vista was for 7.

On the other hand, the Windows Store does seem to be a disappointment... The potential is there (the success of Gameloft games prove it) but most serious developers just don't seem to care... yet

 

[Mitlov]

sunshinerag[/url]":3ho39tmr]And why exactly would we be interested in windows 8 is on track. These articles appear to be written simply to remind people that windows is still alive.

This article is written "simply to remind people that Windows 8 is still alive"? That's why the charts related to desktop operating systems are charts 9 and 10 out of a ten-chart article...right...

 

[dizdizzie]

Stickmansam[/url]":2hwmmuvk]Using Chrome on my personal PC

I ran into update issues which kept me on v35 every since it updated to v35. Automatic and manual updates both failed due to error 3. I ended up resintalling to v37 64bit but still have the update error pop up with the entirely new clean install.

Google's automatic update is only good when it actually works.

This.

Generally I believe for many reasons the updater fails for some very tiny percent of users during every update and the number of people with outdated versions accumulated over the years.

 

[driftmachine]

apockoffork[/url]":2ngq3usf]I wonder what the cause of the ever increasing number of people on outdated versions of chrome is? Chrome makes it really hard not to update so I'm amazed so many people are still sitting on older versions. I guess the same goes for the other browsers as well.

The reason programs don't get updated like they should is: The auto updates are so often. The updates sometimes interrupt work. The people figure a way to disable it to get rid of the annoyance. That's why so many things go un-updated.

Maybe a silent update process would fix the issue.

 

[loquacio]

driftmachine[/url]":1lgs5nbr]

apockoffork[/url]":1lgs5nbr]I wonder what the cause of the ever increasing number of people on outdated versions of chrome is? Chrome makes it really hard not to update so I'm amazed so many people are still sitting on older versions. I guess the same goes for the other browsers as well.

The reason programs don't get updated like they should is: The auto updates are so often. The updates sometimes interrupt work. The people figure a way to disable it to get rid of the annoyance. That's why so many things go un-updated.

Maybe a silent update process would fix the issue.

It is a silent update? I believe? The only I ever notice it is if I see an article about a new feature in Chrome and check to find I've already got the newest version.

 

[r3vrse]

FYI: the Chrome old version prevalence has nothing to do with GPs or other IT policy restrictions. It's that the thing never actually shuts down by default.

I know I've been running an outdated version for weeks or months before because it had silent updated in the background, but I'd never actually restarted it. Sure, I had *closed* the browser window, but there were still Chrome processes running.

 

[Fossegrimen]

mchumm3r[/url]":ft56fx5y]What we have here is M$ supporting the old adage "figures lie and liars figure".

M$ doesn't report actual SALES figures (sales to the end user) but reports distribution figures (consignment (net 30, 60, 90 120) to distributors who consign (net 30) to stores).

It's all a game to inflate their financials w/Wall Street. We've seen this trick repeatedly from M$.

August is the time retail channels pump up inventory for potential sales - which are the figures M$ doesn't report. Unsold inventory gets sent back thru distribution or marked down or otherwise written off in a game of book juggling that would amaze the untrained. (I worked retail as a store's GM for 7yrs and always followed up with mfrs reps to be sure we didn't get stuck with dead inventory after the student rush.)

You can't claim that M$ has had a resurgence in sales until they are actually SALES.


... And the Band Played On ...

Hmmm?

I thought these figures were usage statistics and not sales?

 

[grrrz]

I'm surprised chrome was wildly adopted on mobile and firefox is not even in the list

 

[grumpy2]

It's kind of interesting that Firefox has effectively overtaken Chrome now, with regards to keeping users up to date. It looks like the percentage of Chrome users stuck on old versions is noticeably higher than for Firefox.

 

[drfisheye]

Where are the Chromebooks? Does Netmarketshare report on Chrome OS, or is it really at 0%?

 

[Overlord_Dave]

loquacio[/url]":3pkvp4hk]

driftmachine[/url]":3pkvp4hk]

apockoffork[/url]":3pkvp4hk]I wonder what the cause of the ever increasing number of people on outdated versions of chrome is? Chrome makes it really hard not to update so I'm amazed so many people are still sitting on older versions. I guess the same goes for the other browsers as well.

The reason programs don't get updated like they should is: The auto updates are so often. The updates sometimes interrupt work. The people figure a way to disable it to get rid of the annoyance. That's why so many things go un-updated.

Maybe a silent update process would fix the issue.

It is a silent update? I believe? The only I ever notice it is if I see an article about a new feature in Chrome and check to find I've already got the newest version.

This. After using Chrome for years the only time I've noticed an update is when starting it there may be a message somewhere pointing out a new feature. What do other people experience?