There were 40 posts on the message board on February 7. Isn't that nice? Lots of activity around here.

On February 23 of last year (the day I turned on Google Analytics) there were 538 visits to the site. On February 7 of this year there were 1024 visits to the site.

In February:

48% of visitors here ran Windows
47% ran Mac OS
4% ran Linux

49.8% of Windows users run Firefox
29.4% ran Internet Explorer
11.3% ran Chrome
5.5% ran Opera

65% of Mac users ran Safari
27.5% ran Firefox
3.9% ran Chrome

72% of Linux users ran Firefox
10.6% ran Chrome
9.7% ran Mozilla (!!)
4.2% ran Opera

Maybe Opera market share will be boosted by the 10.5x releases.

What is significant about 10.5?

I'm using Opera 9 here on Linux, but I installed Opera 10.something in my new VirtualBox Windows 2000 installation only to find out that the interface has changed again only this time they have got rid of the menubar, and it took me rather a long time to find it.

It's been rated by many sources as the fastest browser, even beating out Chrome.

Well, Opera always used to claim that their browser was the fastest. Back then though, I always found IE6 to be the faster (in general usage, I wasn't doing any tests).

Yeah... funny thing about IE6. You know how they made it "faster" right? The IE6 performance boost is offset by the fact that Windows must use more resources in order to load certain parts of IE6. This is one of the ploys behind the "Internet Explorer Intergration into Windows" BS This performance loss is especially bad for IE7/8, since those versions no longer share resources with Windows Explorer. As a result, Windows must load even more junk to compensate for this fact. You can tell this by checking the amount of memory/computer resources used in Windows before-and-after installing IE7/8.

I use Firefox when on Windows and Linux, and iCab when on emulated Macintosh to access the site.

Hmm... may be interesting to see the iCab statistics as well.

Google analytics doesn't track iCab.

Nor does it track classic Mac operating systems.

Is there an alternative to Google Analytics?

Probably. But I somehow doubt they track iCab very well. Or old classic Mac versions.

In March, this site was 48% Mac and 46% Windows!

Of the Windows users:

49.9% ran Firefox
29.3% ran IE
11.9% ran Chrome

Of the Macintosh users:

63.6% ran Safari
29.1% ran Firefox
4.5% ran Chrome

In April, the visitors to this site ran Windows 47.7% of the time and Mac OS 47.5% of the time!

Windows users ran:

Firefox (48.2%)
IE (30.2%)
Chrome (13.2%!)
Opera (5.2%)
Safari (2.4%)

Mac OS users ran:

Safari (63.9%)
Firefox (28.6%)
Chrome (5.0%)

64% of visitors are running an English language operating system.

In May, Chrome usage continues to increase:

For Windows:

Firefox: 47.8%
IE: 28.4%
Chrome: 15.2% (wow!)
Opera: 5.3%
Safari: 2.8%

For Macintosh:

Safari: 64.9%
Firefox: 26.4%
Chrome: 6.3%
Camino: .9%
Opera: .9%

In August, 16% of Windows users accessing this page used Google Chrome. A new record, as usual. And 6.2% of Macintosh users used Chrome.

Chrome continues to increase its user share. Not just on this page, but all over, if reports are to be believed.

In October, the visitors to this site ran the following operating systems:

Windows: 47.5%
OS X: 45.8%
Linux: 5.1%

Fully 17.1% of Windows visitors used Google Chrome, in addition to 6.9% of Macintosh visitors.

72% of Macintosh users are using 10.6, while 14% are using 10.5 (intel) and 5% are using 10.5 (ppc)

45% of Windows visitors use XP, while 40% use Windows 7.

It would be interesting to see what Linux distro visitors are using, but the tracker (Google Analytics) doesn't provide that.

The most viewed page in the site is Ronald's SheepShaver for OS X setup guide, which accounts for 8.7% of all pageviews around here. That's more than even the index page of the SheepShaver forum (5.2%), the front page of the wiki (3.6%) and the index of the whole forum (2.6%)

Well, I always try to encourage people to actually read the setup guide. Apparently it works.
And there is a web location file (similar to a Windows internet shortcut file) in my SheepShaver build downloads that points directly to the setup guide.

There are relatively many OSX visitors on this site and almost all of them on a Mac that cannot run 'classic' applications anymore. (One needs 10.4 or earlier on PPC to be able to run the Classic environment.)
These figures support what I gather from the forums: Many Mac users do not come here because they like to experiment with emulators, but because they actually need SheepShaver to be able to continue using software that does not run anymore on their new Macs. In the past years I have seen this shift in interest among Mac users in the forums. And it happened to myself: When I started playing with BasiliskII, SheepShaver and Mini vMac, it was out of curiosity and for nostalgic reasons. I did not need it for anything useful. But after upgrading to Leopard, and certainly now on Intel, I do need SheepShaver for one single 'classic' application, TeleFinder. I am sysop of an old (and now dying) TeleFinder BBS. It can be used with a web browser, but administrator and moderator tasks can only be done with TeleFinder.

The site and forum certainly have changed over the years. When the site started in 1999, it was frequented almost entirely by Windows users... for obvious reasons.

It was many years before the site shifted to being mainly for Macintosh users.

And while half the visitors are Windows, one can easily see that the forum itself is skewed more to Macintosh users. Things sure do change.

Heck, even *I* don't really use Windows anymore.

I'm using Vector Linux, which is Slackware based.

I tend to use Virtual Box to access Windows stuff from within Linux, but I do have an installation of Windows XP which I can boot into as well.

I don't tend to use emulators as much as I used to as I now have access to real older Macintosh systems. I originally used BII etc as I didn't have any Macs.

I don't have any modern Macs., but I would still like to get some sort of OSX installed on my PC as a hackintosh setup.

What do you tend to use these days ClockWise?

I'm an Ubuntu man!

I switched over because Windows XP is getting long in the tooth. I figure that when I buy my next laptop, I might have some trouble installing XP onto it. I had enough trouble getting it running on my current system.

I installed Ubuntu a partition just so I could "get used" to it while still using XP as my main system, but soon afterwards I just switched to using it full time. With the right mods and themes the UI is exactly what I am used to using, and the speed is wonderful. Everything is done so fast. I dig it.

And all the applications I need are available... Open Office for work, VLC Player for movies, some FTP and screenshot software for keeping this site up to date and thanks to Howard I have some good builds of SheepShaver and Basilisk II. I've even been able to get support for Korean language stuff for my partner to use when necessary.

Hi,

I've got Mac OS X 10.6.5 / Windows 7 (I run both roughly equally often) and OpenSuse 11.3 running on the same machine. If you need some pointers about possibly hackintoshing your machine, you should post its specs. (main board and video are the most relevant).

Best,
Cat_7

My motherboard is a Gigabyte GA-P31-ES3G and my graphics card is a Radeon 4550.

Hi,

It seems your machine can work all the way up to OSX 10.6.5 Only the video card might prove a bit troublesome.
Info on getting full support for the videocard is here:
http://www.insanelymac.com/forum/index. ... pic=190586

If you are going to try, the best way to start is to find a so-called boot cd image that boots on your machine from which you can start the actual OSX install.
This might do: http://www.mediafire.com/?ytmlmwhdgnz (unpack the file, and burn the iso to a cd and use it to try to boot your machine, if it does, you can then try to install OSX from a retail disk)
I would suggest reading some guides about that installation method. I would also strongly suggest using a separate hard disk. It needs to be a Sata disk.

Best,
Cat_7

Thanks for the links Cat.

Now I have to find a retail OSX disk .

Why do you recommend using a separate HD? I currently only have one HD in the computer, though I was thinking of putting two in when I built the machine. I suppose I could buy another one next year.