User:Groggy Dice/Hitslink

In many technology articles, browser and operating system statistics from Net Applications and its Hitslink service are often given pride of place. This favoritism over statistics from competing services has sometimes been challenged, as by Lucideer recently.

W3Counter
Superficially, W3Counter has the same key advantage I ascribed to Hitslink: monthly updates. Nevertheless, Hitslink still has the edge.


 * Hitslink is an older, more established service.
 * W3C uses an oddball methodology.

The Mac Slump

 * 1) OS X starts the year with a high in January.
 * 2) In February, Mac numbers fall, but eventually go back up, reaching a new high in May.
 * 3) Mac OS X falls noticeably in June.
 * 4) July tends to be a quiet month, with little change either way.
 * 5) Mac rebounds in August, and even more sharply in September.
 * 6) This begins a period of Mac expansion that runs through the holidays, peaking in January.

Linux Oddness
Net Applications' most vociferous critics are probably those from the Linux community. In Linux forums, you can find Linux fanboys under the delusion that W3Schools offers the most representative, accurate Linux stats on the planet, or that Linux's marketshare is "really" 10%. They often charge that NA has been paid off by Microsoft to suppress the truth (even though they report the highest Mac numbers in the business). Although this is nonsense, there are some strange things that have happened with their Linux numbers.