He points out a very odd anomaly with OSX vs macOS numbers too that highlight the problem even more.
Is it an anomaly? His point is that “OS X” refers to macs pre-2016 and “macOS” as the newer devices. But that’s not accurate, at all.
OS X at 21.14%, and macOS at 8.6% . This is where I stopped reading. We’re looking at OS X, which was replaced by macOS in 2016, at 21.14%, while macOS itself sits at 8.6%.
Even if you consider OS X and macOS separate operating systems, it does not make sense for the decades-old ‘OS X’ to have more users than macOS.
Someone in another thread elsewhere said:
The OS is the same but the browsers report it differently via UA. For example, Chrome reports it as “Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10_15_7” with the usual extra compatibility shit mentioning other browsers/engines (KHTML, Gecko) while the modern Safari dropped all of that shit and reports “com.apple.WebKit.Networking/*** Network/*** macOS/15.7.8”, just tested with nginx.
I can’t confirm those results, in fact, I can’t confirm the “macOS” bit at all. On my Macbook Neo (obviously a current modern Mac, running macOS Tahoe 26.5.2), I get these results:
Librewolf: “Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10.15; rv:151.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/151.0”
Safari: “Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10_15_7) AppleWebKit/605.1.15 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/26.5.2 Safari/605.1.15”
Notably The Macbook Neo is not an Intel Mac, and it is not running version 15.7 which was the previous version macOS Sequoia, but that is what it reports to websites. It should report as “macOS” according to that one dude, yet it doesn’t in either Librewolf or Safari (I don’t have Chrome installed, and I’m not going to just for this shit). The User Agent is actively reporting to websites that it is an older device, even in Safari which does also mention the actual current OS version at near the end.
So if they are relying solely on User Agent reporting, it’s obviously not accurate at a granular level. But at a general-OS level it could be depending on exactly how they’re handling it.
Either way, simply saying “macOS” and “OS X” reporting refers to old and new devices… is plain wrong. And if he’s wrong on such a basic assumption right at the top of his opinion piece… why would I trust any of the rest?
Is it an anomaly? His point is that “OS X” refers to macs pre-2016 and “macOS” as the newer devices. But that’s not accurate, at all.
Someone in another thread elsewhere said:
I can’t confirm those results, in fact, I can’t confirm the “macOS” bit at all. On my Macbook Neo (obviously a current modern Mac, running macOS Tahoe 26.5.2), I get these results:
Notably The Macbook Neo is not an Intel Mac, and it is not running version 15.7 which was the previous version macOS Sequoia, but that is what it reports to websites. It should report as “macOS” according to that one dude, yet it doesn’t in either Librewolf or Safari (I don’t have Chrome installed, and I’m not going to just for this shit). The User Agent is actively reporting to websites that it is an older device, even in Safari which does also mention the actual current OS version at near the end.
So if they are relying solely on User Agent reporting, it’s obviously not accurate at a granular level. But at a general-OS level it could be depending on exactly how they’re handling it.
Either way, simply saying “macOS” and “OS X” reporting refers to old and new devices… is plain wrong. And if he’s wrong on such a basic assumption right at the top of his opinion piece… why would I trust any of the rest?
Excellent points. I hadn’t thought of that.