Mac OS X

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Desktop OS market share
as of September, 2008[1]
Microsoft Windows - 90.29%
Mac OS X and Mac OS - 8.23%
Linux - 0.91%
Solaris - 0.01%
Other - 0.56%
The Firefox web browser running on Mac OS X

Mac OS X is the name of an operating system, or OS, that runs on computers made by Apple Inc. These are called Macintosh computers, or Macs. Unlike most operating systems, Mac OS X is made to run only on Macs and not on other computers. However, some people have made it run on computers that are not Macs.

Mac OS X, which is read aloud as "Mac Oh Ess Ten," first came out in 2001, and is completely different than the Mac OS that it replaced. Mac OS X is a UNIX OS that is based on NEXTSTEP, an older OS that Apple bought and turned into Mac OS X. Mac OS X and NEXTSTEP have a background in a kind of UNIX called BSD. The core of Mac OS X is an open source OS called Darwin, but Darwin cannot run Mac OS X software.

Mac OS X releases are named after kinds of "big cats" and have a version number that starts with 10. The latest version of Mac OS X is called "Leopard" and is version 10.5. It was released on October 26, 2007. The next version is called "Snow Leopard" and will be version 10.6.

Mac OS X is not used as much as Windows, partly because it only runs on Macs. Many people who use Mac OS X like it because they say it has more features and is easier to use. Some people do not like Mac OS X because they say it needs a powerful computer to run well and they think it should run on most computers like Windows and Linux do.

References

  1. ↑ Operating System Market Share, September 2008, courtesy of Net Applications, a marketing company which obtains its data from the Alexa Toolbar or related products. Because people who install these products on their computers are not always aware that the product reports web browsing habits back to the marketers at Alexa some security software considers the Alexa Toolbar spyware and removes it. Both the automated removal-as-spyware and the self-selecting nature of those who install software that reports on personal web browsing habits raises questions as to whether the resulting data represents a unbiased statistical sample of Internet users.

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Retrieved from "http://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mac_OS_X"

This article is from Wikipedia. All text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License.

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