Windows market share

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Hmmm… Interesting report from Good Morning Silicon Valley.

The latest numbers from Web tracking outfit Net Applications indicate the market share of Windows in November dropped to a level not seen since the days of Windows 3.11 in the early ’90’s. Now, before you go breaking out that bottle of cognac you’ve been saving to celebrate the end of the Microsoft hegemony, note that this slide still leaves Windows, by Net Applications’ tally, with a market share of 89.62 percent, a level most companies can’t even dream of. Still, that’s down from a high around 97.5 percent back around 2002-2003, and a drop of 2.8 percentage points in the past 12 months alone. The major beneficiary of the defections was Apple; Net Applications said the Mac OS market share last month was 8.87 percent, up from 6.80 percent in November of last year and up from 3.2 percent in November 2004. The survey also showed gains for Linux, shown with a 0.83 percent share, up from 0.57 percent a year ago 0.30 percent in November 2004. And it’s not like Microsoft could find any consolation in Net Applications’ browser share figures, which showed Internet Explorer dipping below 70 percent, while Mozilla’s Firefox climbed above 20 percent and Apple’s Safari and Google’s Chrome also gained ground. The numbers may not have the folks in Redmond tossing fitfully in their beds yet, but they can’t be happy.

On this day…

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… in 1984, more than 4,000 people died after a cloud of gas escaped from a pesticide plant operated by a Union Carbide subsidiary in Bhopal, India.

Twitter: the nub of it

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At breakfast the other morning with a group of colleagues, two of them expressed the classic put-down of Twitter: “I’m not interested in knowing that someone has just had a cup of tea and put the cat out”. The point of Twitter for me is not really what’s going on my contacts’ lives, but what’s going on in their heads. And that’s what I mostly get from the service, and it’s worth having.

On this day…

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… in 1954, the United States Senate voted to condemn Sen. Joseph R. McCarthy, R Wis., for “conduct that tends to bring the Senate into dishonor and disrepute.”

Lighting up time

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Puzzled? I would be too if I didn’t know the context. It’s an uplighter cunningly inserted in a distressed Art Deco mirror.

Photographed in a nice Cambridge restaurant last night.

Gladwell debunked

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I enjoy Malcolm Gladwell’s writing. But anyone who can get $30,000 for an appearance has to be riding for a fall. Today, Andrew Orlowski has a go. Knockabout stuff.

Have you ever had the nagging sense that there’s something not quite right with the adulation that follows Malcolm Gladwell – the author of Tipping Point? But you couldn’t quite put your finger on it? We’re here to help, dear reader.

Gladwell gave two vanity “performances” in the West End – prompting fevered adulation from the posh papers – the most amazing being this Guardian editorial, titled In Praise of Malcolm Gladwell.

It appears that we have a paradox here. A substantial subclass of white collar “knowledge workers” hails this successful nonfiction author as fantastically intelligent and full of insight – and yet he causes an outbreak of infantalisation. He’s better known for his Afro than any big idea, or bold conclusion – and his insights have all the depth and originality of Readers Digest or a Hallmark greeting card. That’s pretty odd.

So what’s really going on here? Who is Malcolm Gladwell? What’s he really saying? Who are these people who lap it all up? And what is it that he’s saying that hold so much appeal?

Orlowski coins a memorable term of abuse. Gladwell, he says, is a walking version of ‘Reader’s Digest 2.0’. Ouch!