Apple WWDC14 Streaming Live

jimmyb said:
It means that OSX users are faster to switch to Mavericks than Windows users are to switch to Windows 8. This was a slide on OS adoption rates. Was that not clear to you?
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But you specifically bought up the point of cross-platform development. What does this mean for that situation?

jimmyb said:
There are lots of things that are interesting to a developer: adoption rates, total audience, developments tools, hardware architecture, etc. This particular slide was about adoption rates, not about those other things.
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My point is that out of all the things that you mentioned here, total audience is the key. Because that's the upper limit. And total audience has nothing to do with adoption rates depending on the TARGET audience. Please tell me why a desktop/laptop game developer would care about the adoption rate of a specific version of OS X?

jimmyb said:
You said you didn't understand the point about comparing adoption rates. Many of us have pointed out that this information is interesting and/or useful to some people. Do you understand the point now?
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No. I said I don't understand that it means to compare adoption rates between two OSes of such dissimilar market share where 51% percent is 1/4th of 14% of another in absolute numbers. For whatever reason, everyone arguing with me in this thread refuses to do the math and explain why it matters specifically to a developer. So I'm constantly challenged and no one is explaining the reason behind the specifics that can't get more specific. Other than to say a nebulous number means something.
 
heatlesssun said:
But you specifically bought up the point of cross-platform development. What does this mean for that situation?
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I said if you were familiar with cross-platform development you ought to know that adoption rates and market segmentation data is useful information which informs business and development decisions. Note I was only making a point that you ought to know this (being a developer?) - note the subtle distinction.


heatlesssun said:
My point is that out of all the things that you mentioned here, total audience is the key.
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To make an informed decisions you want multiple pieces of data and multiple analysis. You don't refuse to look at data which isn't "the key". And again, you are making implicit assumptions about why people might want to know about adoption rates - some people may be primarily interested in the comparative rate.


heatlesssun said:
No. I said I don't understand that it means to compare adoption rates between two OSes of such dissimilar market share where 51% percent is 1/4th of 14% of another in absolute numbers.
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It means they are comparing the propensity of of OSX users to updade to the latest version of OSX vs. Windows users to update to the latest version of Windows.

heatlesssun said:
Other than to say a nebulous number means something.
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Are you seriously suggesting that software adoption rates are a nebulous number? It's a *very* common metric in the industry. Literally every single quarterly review I can remember has included an analysis of software adoption rates in the context of competition.
 
gamz247 said:
This doesn't make any sense. Mavericks, like Mountain Lion, Lion, Snow Leopard, etc. before it, is OS X. Mavericks is simply OS X version 10.9. Windows 8 is not just a newer version of Windows 7.
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I agree that those are all OSX. I never made claims about the architectural differences between different versions of OS, or different versions of Windows.

I said OSX users are switching to Mavericks faster than Windows users are switching to Windows 8. This is a well-formed english sentence, and it is factually correct. If it doesn't make sense to you that is not my fault.
 
jimmyb said:
I said OSX users are switching to Mavericks faster than Windows users are switching to Windows 8.
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That's because "switching" from Mountain Lion to Mavericks is like "switching" from Windows 8 to Windows 8.1.
 
heatlesssun said:
This isn't it at all. You bought up a good point about cross-platform development. What does the fact that 51% of 80 million OS X users are on Mavericks mean compared to the fact that 14% of 1.3 billion Windows users are on Windows 8.x? Anyone trying to make an argument beyond this very simple point is just clouding the point.


What's more interesting to a developer is the maximum total audience for any given version. No one here has even tried to touch the argument I've made with Mavericks vs. Windows 8.x because we all know that gaming on OS X is beyond a lost cause.
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Developers want to focus on maximizing hitting their target while simultaneously minimizing development costs.

Faster adoption rates indicates that more and more users of a base will move to the current platform in larger numbers and do so quicker. This means that developers can reasonably expect to hit most users while still focusing on only one main version. They can use all the latest whiz-bang features and they don't have to worry about legacy support because Apple pushes the users off old devices and the owners willingly move to updated devices.

In Windows' ecosystem, even though there are millions more users, many of them languish on old systems. Developers can't simply focus on Windows 8 development because they risk the software acting differently on well over 7/8th the entire user base equipment.

That means they have to support Windows 8, Windows 7, and possibly Vista. Once they see adoption rates surpassing 50% like in the Apple ecosystem they can reduce legacy support.

Adoption rate also tends to correlate well with user excitement for the platform and base buy-in. Those kinds of users enjoy being on the up and coming edge of things and also more likely to buy apps. In developer terms, it translates to, we've got an active user base and they're excited about the platform.

No platform is going to get 100% buy-in so developers are going to aim for the most active platform rather than who has the largest user base.
 
mope54 said:
No platform is going to get 100% buy-in so developers are going to aim for the most active platform rather than who has the largest user base.
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If Windows 8 was a free upgrade like Mavericks is, no doubt the adoption rate would be higher. Probably not 51%, but somewhere north of 25.
 
gamz247 said:
If Windows 8 was a free upgrade like Mavericks is, no doubt the adoption rate would be higher. Probably not 51%, but somewhere north of 25.
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Amazing, you've discovered that factors such as price and ease-of-upgrade affect adoption rates!
 
mope54 said:
Faster adoption rates indicates that more and more users of a base will move to the current platform in larger numbers and do so quicker.
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This statement exemplifies the problem with the comparison of those pie charts. "OS X users move in larger numbers more quickly to the latest version of OS X." And that's absolutely false. No Apple didn't present it that way, but they understand that some people will and word of mouth advertising is powerful.

mope54 said:
In Windows' ecosystem, even though there are millions more users, many of them languish on old systems. Developers can't simply focus on Windows 8 development because they risk the software acting differently on well over 7/8th the entire user base equipment.

That means they have to support Windows 8, Windows 7, and possibly Vista. Once they see adoption rates surpassing 50% like in the Apple ecosystem they can reduce legacy support.
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I can agree with most of this but part of the problem is that OS X doesn't run on tablets. There would to be more developers that are indeed focused on Windows Store apps than those focused on apps that only run on Mavericks. That's because even with only a 14% adoption rate, that's 160 million Windows 8 users, a lot with new devices, a lot of them touch, looking for new apps. I understand that the Windows Store hasn't progressed as quickly as it needed to but new apps are being added at about the 7,000 per month clip and while a lot are junk, there are some nice ones. And a lot of those apps ironically aren't on OS X but many have been ported from the iPad.

mope54 said:
Adoption rate also tends to correlate well with user excitement for the platform and base buy-in. Those kinds of users enjoy being on the up and coming edge of things and also more likely to buy apps. In developer terms, it translates to, we've got an active user base and they're excited about the platform.

No platform is going to get 100% buy-in so developers are going to aim for the most active platform rather than who has the largest user base.
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Again, I mostly agree. And this is were the absolute numbers mean more than the percentages.
 
heatlesssun said:
No Apple didn't present it that way, but they understand that some people will and word of mouth advertising is powerful.
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It's almost impossible to present anything but the most trivial statistics without them being misinterpreted (ex: see any science journalism). The data presented was succinct and accurate (I presume). This type of analysis is done *regularly* in all major tech companies and is not unusual. The fact that a run-of-the-mill and interesting metric can be misinterpreted by a bunch of basement-dwellers on the internet does not warrant self-censoring.

(Also who cares if some uneducated people misinterpret them? Why is this something that we give two shits about?). A somewhat more legitimate concern would be if the numbers were inaccurate, or if the data was being misapplied - but AFAIK this is not the case.


Otherwise, sounds like you now understand comparative adoption rates have some value. Great.
 
jimmyb said:
Otherwise, sounds like you now understand comparative adoption rates have some value. Great.
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Not in cases where the percentages are based on counts where one count is an order of magnitude higher than the other. Also, when we're talking about Windows 8.x specific development, we're mostly talking about Windows Store apps. Apps that are mostly designed to run on touchscreen tablets. Where the adoption rate on those things for OS X is 0%. What possible relevance does the 51% adoption rate of Mavericks have on a developer working on tablet and touch apps?

The adoption rates are just numbers that Apple can throw around because 51% is much larger than 14%. Comparing those two percentages is meaningless given the vastly larger size of the Windows user base coupled with the fact that apps that are specially designed for Windows 8 support input methods and devices that aren't even supported by OS X.
 
heatlesssun said:
Not in cases where the percentages are based on counts where one count is an order of magnitude higher than the other. Also, when we're talking about Windows 8.x specific development, we're mostly talking about Windows Store apps. Apps that are mostly designed to run on touchscreen tablets. Where the adoption rate on those things for OS X is 0%. What possible relevance does the 51% adoption rate of Mavericks have on a developer working on tablet and touch apps?

The adoption rates are just numbers that Apple can throw around because 51% is much larger than 14%. Comparing those two percentages is meaningless given the vastly larger size of the Windows user base coupled with the fact that apps that are specially designed for Windows 8 support input methods and devices that aren't even supported by OS X.
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Why do you even care? I mean, aside from the fact that the faster adoption rate of the latest version of OS X makes the rate of adoption of Windows 8/8.1 look bad, I see like zero reason why you'd wanna waste keystrokes arguing over trivial points as a roundabout way to act as damage control for a product that you like, but isn't widely accepted in the broader context of the industry in which it exists. It's okay to go against the flow, but seriously, step away from the keyboard and think about how you're spending your company's work day.
 
heatlesssun said:
Also, when we're talking about Windows 8.x specific development, we're mostly talking about Windows Store apps. Apps that are mostly designed to run on touchscreen tablets. Where the adoption rate on those things for OS X is 0%. What possible relevance does the 51% adoption rate of Mavericks have on a developer working on tablet and touch apps?
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You are forcing this particular context on the analysis There are *many* reasons why people may be interested in a rate comparison.

Suppose I am researching ways to push out software updates quickly. The comparative rates are very relevant to me, whereas the absolute numbers are of lesser use.

Suppose one of the goals of OSX development was to increase adoption rates and reduce fragmentation; they would be very interested in comparing how they were doing compared to their peers as reference point.

Suppose I am a developer and need to make some predictions about how to allocate human resources to support legacy and current operating systems - I will need to know about the market fragmentation and expected adoption rates on all platforms. I will need to aggregate this data and present it (possibly in a slide!).

These are just a few examples. In all these circumstances the absolute size of each market is of less use than the adoption *rate* and the expected fragmentation. You seem obsessed with total market size (which is certainly important data), but it is not the only metric of value.
 
I mean saying that relative adoption rate comparisons are meaningless contradicts the fact that literally every major tech company is performing these comparisons and allowing them to feed their business and development decisions. Please think about this carefully.
 
jimmyb said:
Suppose I am researching ways to push out software updates quickly. The comparative rates are very relevant to me, whereas the absolute numbers are of lesser use.
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How do adoption rates have anything to software updates? If you're talking about a multi-platform application and prioritizing resources and such, a developer is going to give priority to his largest platform. If a developer had an app with 3 times the number of Windows 8 users as Mavericks user, why in the world would a developer be looking at adoption rates?

jimmyb said:
I will need to know about the market fragmentation and expected adoption rates on all platforms. I will need to aggregate this data and present it (possibly in a slide!).
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Again, what's FAR more important here are the absolute number of customers you have on each platform.

jimmyb said:
I mean saying that relative adoption rate comparisons are meaningless contradicts the fact that literally every major tech company is performing these comparisons and allowing them to feed their business and development decisions. Please think about this carefully.
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Why would anyone compare Mavericks to Windows 8 adoption rates and use those numbers to determine if they should develop a touch optimized Windows Store app?
 
Terpfen said:
So, wait. Ease of transition is now a BAD thing?
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hahaha, the only people making that comparison obviously haven't tried to update from 8 to 8.1. It was *nothing* like going from Mountain Lion to Mavericks other than the fact they are both electronically delivered. There were so many problems updating to 8.1 that people flat gave up on it. I stuck it through and had four different computers take a crap for different reasons. The one that upgraded smoothly couldn't update the store apps and none of them will do a refresh now.

That said, I'm surprised that people here still don't understand versioning of all places.
Windows 8 to 8.1 is not equivalent to Mountain Lion to Mavericks. It's equivalent to Mavericks to 10.9.1 then 10.9.2 then 10.9.3. It becomes really apparent who actually uses multiple platforms in these forums and nearly everyone spouting off about Apple products haven't laid a single finger to keyboard on one to make an informed opinion about them.
 
Just watched it. As an iOS user, I am happy that they ripped off "Ok, Google Now", transparency in OSX (but I only use Windows).

I think it is awesome that iMessage can now handle SMS messages, now I can respond to them from my iPad and not just iMessages.

Family sharing is a very cool feature, it is like a social network that is only between 6 or fewer people and has nothing to do with Facebook.

Gotta admit it, they are actually adding stuff to OSX. I have used every version of Windows since 3.1, (each for years at a time). Currently using 8.1 and have used 8.0 since day one. The point is, the only things that Windows has added since XP that I find useful is Windows snap and some better monitoring tools so I don't have to install a bunch of third party stuff. I am one of the few but I think the start screen has been fine since 8.1.
 
heatlesssun said:
How do adoption rates [of updated software] have anything to software updates?
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Are you seriously asking this?????????

heatlesssun said:
Again, what's FAR more important here are the absolute number of customers you have on each platform.
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That may or may not be true; but it's irrelevant to the discussion. You said you didn't understand the comparison and thought it didn't have any value. I've explained that it does have value to many people and many businesses - the fact that some other metric may be more important is irrelevant to your point that it has no value.

If you want to talk about something else that's fine, but we're not having that conversion currently.


heatlesssun said:
Why would anyone compare Mavericks to Windows 8 adoption rates and use those numbers to determine if they should develop a touch optimized Windows Store app?
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Is this a non-sequitur? I've never said anything about "a touch optimized Windows Store app". I am not going to try and defend a position I've never taken.
 
jimmyb said:
Are you seriously asking this?????????
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I presented an argument where clearly adoption rates have nothing to do with how a 3rd party app developer would look at updates. How in the world could adoption rates have more meaning to a developer supporting their applications than the actual count of the platforms that run that developer's software?

jimmyb said:
Is this a non-sequitur? I've never said anything about "a touch optimized Windows Store app". I am not going to try and defend a position I've never taken.
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You've made arguments about adoption rates but I don't see the connection between what you're saying and reality. By far and away the biggest difference between development on Windows 7 vs. Windows 8 are Windows Store apps which only run on 8.x obviously. The majority of these apps are touch and tablet optimized. So if a developer is specifically targeting Windows 8, were probably talking about Windows Store apps that target form factors and input methods not supported by OS X. So the adoption rate of a version of an OS X in this case, which is the primary difference between Windows 7 and 8 development, is irrelevant.

There have been a few articles made of this percentage comparison. It's like I said earlier, it has nothing to do with Apple or any one company in particular. Using percentage comparisons between two things where one is ten times larger is guaranteed to draw a lot of criticism each and every time it's done and it doesn't matter who’s doing it. Especially when the percentages being compared are of real numbers where the higher percentage is 1/4th the count of the lower percentage.
 
mope54 said:
That said, I'm surprised that people here still don't understand versioning of all places.
Windows 8 to 8.1 is not equivalent to Mountain Lion to Mavericks. It's equivalent to Mavericks to 10.9.1 then 10.9.2 then 10.9.3. It becomes really apparent who actually uses multiple platforms in these forums and nearly everyone spouting off about Apple products haven't laid a single finger to keyboard on one to make an informed opinion about them.
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lol... definitely not. A move from Mountain Lion to Mavericks is the equivalent of a typical Patch Tuesday for Microsoft. They throw in a little different font and change up the gloss a bit. Big deal.

When I moved from 10.7.1 to 10.7.5 I can say with full confidence that I noticed absolutely nothing different, except the things that didn't work anymore and my backup being corrupted. I don't think the same can be said of 8 to 8.1.
 
jwcalla said:
lol... definitely not. A move from Mountain Lion to Mavericks is the equivalent of a typical Patch Tuesday for Microsoft. They throw in a little different font and change up the gloss a bit. Big deal.

When I moved from 10.7.1 to 10.7.5 I can say with full confidence that I noticed absolutely nothing different, except the things that didn't work anymore and my backup being corrupted. I don't think the same can be said of 8 to 8.1.
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10.7.1 and 10.7.5 are both Lion, which is exactly my point. *That* is the equivalent of a minor patch. The rest of what you wrote about the differences between Mountain Lion and Mavericks is simply factually incorrect.
 
mope54 said:
hahaha, the only people making that comparison obviously haven't tried to update from 8 to 8.1. It was *nothing* like going from Mountain Lion to Mavericks other than the fact they are both electronically delivered. There were so many problems updating to 8.1 that people flat gave up on it. I stuck it through and had four different computers take a crap for different reasons. The one that upgraded smoothly couldn't update the store apps and none of them will do a refresh now.
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Anecdotal evidence is anecdotal. Does the fact that my upgrade from 8 to 8.1 went off without a hitch balance out the problems you had?

Anyway, Windows 8.1 already has a higher market share than Windows 8, and 50% more market share than Mavericks. In fact, Windows 8.1 alone has only about 1% less market share than all versions of OS X combined. You can talk about adoption rate until you're blue in the face, but there are already more people using Windows 8.1 than Mavericks.
 
gamz247 said:
Anecdotal evidence is anecdotal. Does the fact that my upgrade from 8 to 8.1 went off without a hitch balance out the problems you had?
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I suppose it might but you're conflating two different points.

Ease of upgrade was one point I was disputing by pointing out that numerous sites across the web were devoted to trying to sort the mess of upgrading from Windows 8 to 8.1.

The second point is that the only similarities between upgrading from Windows 8 to 8.1 and Mountain Lion to Mavericks is the fact that they're electronically delivered. I didn't hinge that point on whether one was easier to upgrade than the other. You simply collapsed two different points.
 
mope54 said:
Ease of upgrade was one point I was disputing by pointing out that numerous sites across the web were devoted to trying to sort the mess of upgrading from Windows 8 to 8.1.
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You hear from the people that have problems, and don't from those that have no issues. Windows version upgrades can be problematic but for me and the 20 or so personal and family and friends PCs I upgraded from 8.0 to 8.1, I never had a single problem. The biggest issue for me was the time it took to update some Clover Trail tablets, close to 4 hours. The upgrade process was simple and worked, just very slow, but that's surprising considering that these are slow devices to begin with.
 
heatlesssun said:
You hear from the people that have problems, and don't from those that have no issues.
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Regardless, the combined total of both groups, those who had problems and those who did not, is only 14% of the user base

but hey, keep arguing this point into the ground if you'd like. never mind that the person posting before you tried to argue with a straight face that upgrading his OS corrupted his backup :rolleyes:
 
mope54 said:
Regardless, the combined total of both groups, those who had problems and those who did not, is only 14% of the user base
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That's right. It's only 14% of a number so big that that 14% in absolute numbers is more deployed copies than all other non-Windows desktop OSes combined. What's been interesting about all of is that some what to talk about percentages yet totally disregard the actually numbers from which those percentages are calculated. That's just not how it works in reality.

mope54 said:
but hey, keep arguing this point into the ground if you'd like. never mind that the person posting before you tried to argue with a straight face that upgrading his OS corrupted his backup :rolleyes:
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I wasn't even talking about this subject in this post, you bought it up for some reason. I was simply pointing out my personal experience with 8.0 to 8.1. Obviously individual experiences with this process will vary.
 
heatlesssun said:
How in the world could adoption rates have more meaning to a developer supporting their applications than the actual count of the platforms that run that developer's software?
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Before I dive into this I'll remind you that I gave a number of examples where someone might find value in the comparison; there are many other scenarios I did not mention, and further many that I may simply be unaware of. If you arguing that the comparison has *no* value it is not sufficient to argue against my examples piecemeal, you have to show that there is *no* scenario existing where someone would find this useful. This is the scope of what you are trying to argue (and frankly one of the reasons it is so absurd). Do you understand?

Now, to answer your question:
1) A developer may want to have their users on the most recent version of their software.
2) They may want to do some market research about how best to accomplish this.
3) This market research may involve identifying companies that are effectively transitioning their users to the latest versions of their software quickly, and then examining the techniques and circumstances that enable them to do so
4) identifying companies that do this effectively can be done by looking at comparative adoption rates and fragmentation; the absolute market share is less useful here as a metric


heatlesssun said:
Using percentage comparisons between two things where one is ten times larger is guaranteed to draw a lot of criticism each and every time it's done and it doesn't matter who’s doing it.
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Agreed. There are a lot of people who don't understand statistics, normalized data, and rate based analysis techniques. The fact that there are a lot of ignorant people has nothing to do with whether this type of data has value (hint: it does). These comparisons are made daily in the fields of science, engineering, and statistics.
 
jimmyb said:
Now, to answer your question:
1) A developer may want to have their users on the most recent version of their software.
2) They may want to do some market research about how best to accomplish this.
3) This market research may involve identifying companies that are effectively transitioning their users to the latest versions of their software quickly, and then examining the techniques and circumstances that enable them to do so
4) identifying companies that do this effectively can be done by looking at comparative adoption rates and fragmentation; the absolute market share is less useful here as a metric
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Mavericks is a free upgrade. If one is looking maximize the number of existing customers on the latest versions of their software, make the upgrades free. I don't think there's much mystery surrounding this subject. Of the economics of that is a different matter.

jimmyb said:
Agreed. There are a lot of people who don't understand statistics, normalized data, and rate based analysis techniques. The fact that there are a lot of ignorant people has nothing to do with whether this type of data has value (hint: it does). These comparisons are made daily in the fields of science, engineering, and statistics.
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The paradox about these comparative adoption rates is that even though Windows 8.x has a much lower adoption rate, there's significantly more targeted development for Windows 8.x than Mavericks. However these apps generally aren't about desktop use and align more with iOS apps. When comparing OS X and Windows were talking about groups of such vastly different size and audience that yes, the adoption rate is pretty pointless. One key group for Windows is the enterprise. Advanced math isn't needed to know that this group couldn't care less about yearly desktop OS upgrades.
 
rflcptr said:
there's no paradox; you're inventing it in your mind.
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How else does someone talk about Windows 8 in a thread about Apple products without inventing a reason to do it and then acting pretend dense about responses in order to continue doing it?
 
rflcptr said:
the subject of discussion wasn't Windows 8.
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Windows%208%20vs%20OS%20X%20Mavericks%20adoption.png
 
that's not the "subject," it's a comparative stat to facilitate discussion of another.

actually I believe Cook's point all along was so you felt the burn. so very much.
 
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