First week OS X Yosemite usage is out-shooting Mavericks, but not by much

By Adrian Diaconescu Published October 27, 2014

Chitika, the same online ad network that documented the success of Apple’s OS X Yosemite public beta, is now reporting fresh usage numbers associated with the operating system’s full release.

As expected, the newest version of OS X is rapidly being adopted by Mac users, but, perhaps not as rapidly as Cupertino had hoped.

Recommended Videos

One week in, Yosemite adoption is outpacing Mavericks. The tenth major release of OS X, which dropped last October, snatched a 12.4 percent share of all Macs after a week, according to Chitika.

Its successor, which was launched on October 16, nearly hit the 13 percent mark in the same time-frame. Ultimately, it stopped at 12.8 percent, which is far from a massive rise. What’s even more vexing for Apple is that Yosemite got off to a roaring start, notching its first percentage point the day it went up as a free download.

That’s significantly higher than the initial adoption rate for both Mavericks, and Mountain Lion. From there, Yosemite increased its lead over Mountain Lion, but couldn’t quite shake off Mavericks. It even fell behind at one point, but recovered hours later.

While taking off more than twice as fast as Mountain Lion is no easy feat, that’s like comparing apples and oranges. Back in 2012, you had to pay to get Mountain Lion, whereas Yosemite is a free walk in the park for anyone already running Mountain Lion, or Mavericks.

It’s worth pointing out that Chitika’s numbers are in no way infallible. They rely on the sampling of tens of millions of Mac OS X-based online ad impressions. Plus, they only take U.S. and Canadian Web traffic into account.

All in all, it’s a little surprising to see Apple’s newest desktop operating system struggling to gain more popularity. OS X Yosemite has been hit with a warm wave of overwhelmingly positive reviews.

Visually inspired by iOS, Yosemite focuses on the theme of continuity, aiming to better integrate all of Apple’s services, and bring desktops closer to mobile products. It’s the “sandwich” that combines the “peanut butter” iOS, and the jelly of OS X.

Apparently, not everyone’s that hungry yet.

Topics

Apple
Apple

Adrian Diaconescu

Former Digital Trends Contributor

Adrian is a mobile aficionado since the days of the Nokia 3310, and a PC enthusiast since Windows 98. Later, he discovered…

Computing

Outlook typing lag will finally get a fix from Microsoft

A Dell laptop connected to a hard drive on a couch.

If you use classic Outlook to handle your emails, then you're most likely familiar with the annoying bug that causes huge CPU spikes while typing. It can be difficult to finish emails when your system resources jump by as much as 50 percent (and increase power usage with it), but Microsoft has finally announced that a fix is on the way. The downside? It won't arrive until late May for most users, although some might see it in early or mid May if they're part of the beta program. Until then, there is a workaround.

Rolling classic Outlook back to version 2405 seems to fix the issue, but it comes with a not-insignificant tradeoff. Updates since version 2405 have patched several security flaws, so if you opt to go this route, be aware that it opens your system to vulnerabilities.

Computing

YouTube’s AI Overviews want to make search results smarter

YouTube App

YouTube is experimenting with a new AI feature that could change how people find videos. Here's the kicker: not everyone is going to love it.

The platform has started rolling out AI-generated video summaries directly in search results, but only for a limited group of YouTube Premium subscribers in the U.S. For now, the AI Overviews are focused on things like product recommendations and travel ideas. They're meant to give quick highlights from multiple videos without making users look at each item they're interested in.

Computing

OpenAI’s GPT-4 might be coming to an end. Here’s why that’s actually good news

OpenAI's new typeface OpenAI Sans

OpenAI has seen many changes in recent weeks, and more are quickly coming. The AI company has yet to confirm the launch of its upcoming GPT-5 AI model. However, it is making room for its planned model by ending support for other models in its lineup. OpenAI recently announced that it is retiring its GPT-4 AI model as of April 30. GPT-4 stood as one of the brand’s most popular and longest-running large language models. However, the company has already shifted its focus away from its original large language model technology and more toward its series of reasoning models and other technologies in recent months.

The brand has also made some interesting moves by introducing a new GPT 4.1 model family, strictly as an API for developers, while simultaneously indicating plans to sunset the recently launched GPT-4.5 model and also releasing the o3 and o4 reasoning models. While not yet confirmed, these moves appear to propel the GPT-5 timeline closer to launch.