Windows 10 is installed on 24.5% of devices — but that’s only half the story. “Apple’s Mac share of personal computers worldwide fell to a five-year low in December, ” reports Computerworld, adding that Linux and Windows “both benefited, with increases of around a half percentage point during 2016.” An anonymous reader quotes their report: According to web analytics vendor Net Applications, Apple’s desktop and notebook operating system — formerly OS X, now macOS — powered just 6.1% of all personal computers last month, down from 7% a year ago and a peak of 9.6% as recently as April 2016… The Mac’s 6.1% user share in December was the lowest mark recorded by Net Applications since August 2011, more than five years ago… In October, the company reported sales of 4.9 million Macs for the September quarter, a 14% year-over-year decline and the fourth straight quarterly downturn. Apple’s sales slide during the past 12 months has been steeper than for the personal computer industry as a whole, according to industry researchers from IDC and Gartner, a 180-degree shift from the prior 30 or so quarters, when the Mac’s growth rate repeatedly beat the business average. Apple’s success through 2016 was “fueled by Microsoft’s stumbles with Windows 8 and a race-to-the-bottom mentality among rival OEMs, ” according to the article, which also notes that the user share for Linux exceeded 2% in June, and reached 2.3% by November. Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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Apple’s Share of PC Users Drops To A Five-Year Low
An anonymous reader writes: Remember that story about how women “get pull requests accepted more (except when you know they’re women).” The study actually showed that men also had their code accepted more often when their gender wasn’t known, according to Tech In Asia — and more importantly, the lower acceptance rates (for both men and women) applied mostly to code submitters from outside the GitHub community. “Among insiders, there’s no evidence of discrimination against women. In fact, the reverse is true: women who are on the inside and whose genders are easy to discern get more of their code approved, and to a statistically significant degree.” Eight months after the story ran, the BBC finally re-wrote their original headline (“Women write better code, study suggests”) and added the crucial detail that acceptance rates for women fell “if they were not regulars on the service and were identified by their gender.” Read more of this story at Slashdot. 
From a report on TorrentFreak: 2016 has been a memorable year for torrent users but not in a good way. Over a period of just a few months, several of the largest torrent sites vanished from the scene. From KickassTorrents, through Torrentz to What.cd, several torrent giants have left the scene.Another notable website which vanished is TorrentHound. ThePirateBay is back, but is often facing issues. Not long ago, ExtraTorrent noted that it was on the receiving end of several DDoS attacks. Read more of this story at Slashdot.