Following Apple’s blowout December quarter during which it shipped a record 37 million iPhone handsets and 15.4 million iPad tablets, a significant shift has taken place. iOS’s share of U.S. Web traffic as observed during a six-month study conducted by leading ad network Chitika has surpassed Apple’s Mac OS Web traffic share for the first time. Read on for more.

Chitika monitored traffic across its network between mid-August 2011 and early February, and compared the volume from Apple’s iPhone, iPad and iPod touch devices to traffic from Mac computers. The study covered hundreds of millions of ad impressions and it used user agent data to determine Web traffic share for each platform. According to Chitika’s data, iOS’s Web traffic share finally topped Mac OS earlier this month.

“The data shows that the web market shares of iOS and OS X have been converging steadily since August,” Chitika’s Gabe Donnini noted in the firm’s report. ”iOS has been posting regular gains, and has experienced an overall growth of nearly 50%, whereas OS X has seen its market share decline by 25% since a high point in September. February marks the first point where a reversal in position can be seen in the respective operating systems. iOS passes Mac OS with 8.15% of all web traffic, whereas Mac OS only sees 7.96%.”

The trend observed by Chitika is likely to continue, and the disparity between iOS Web traffic and Mac OS traffic will almost certainly grow. Apple’s MacBook line of notebook computers saw growth recently that outpaced the rest of the PC industry, but the growth in Apple’s PC division pales in comparison to its mobile devices.

The proliferation of iOS devices around the world is expected to continue as Apple releases its iPad 3 early next month and a completely redesigned next-generation iPhone later this year.

Following news earlier on Friday that an untethered jailbreak for the iPhone 4S and iPad 2 was almost ready for public release, anew tool has been made available for download. The new build makes use of pod2g’s “corona” exploit and is the result of combined efforts from the iPhone Dev Team, the Chronic Dev team and iOS hacker pod2g. The tool that enables iOS devices with A5 processors to be jailbroken has been dubbed “Absinthe A5,” and users need to load the Greenpois0n website on their devices in order to trigger the jailbreak. Users having problems loading the site in Safari should simply go into Settings and enable VPN — after about a minute, the device will reboot and the jailbreak will be applied. iPhone 4S users running iOS 5.0 and iOS 5.0.1 and iPad 2 owners running iOS 5.0.1 can download Absinthe for OS X via the read link below to apply. Unfortunately, there is still no option for Windows users looking for an iPhone 4S or iPad 2 untethered jailbreak for the time being.

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Microsoft’s desktop Windows operating system was the only major platform to show usage gains in November according to new data released on Tuesday. Using impressions served to desktop and mobile platforms to calculate market share, advertising network Chitika found that Windows gained 1.4% between October and November to climb to a 76.45% share. Apple’s Mac OS stayed in the No.2 spot but slid 0.35% to a 9.33% share, and iOS dropped 0.04% to a 6.76% share in November. Android dipped 0.58% to 3.93% while Linux shed a half a point to drop to 2.93%. Chitika noted that this is the first time Android’s share has declined in several months, though it anticipates a rebound in December. Charts outlining the firm’s findings follow below.

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Skype on Thursday announced that its Mac OS X and Windows beta clients now support video calls to Facebook users. Skype introduced a Facebook-to-Facebook video client for the social network in July, but now users on both platforms can video chat with one another. Users who choose to download Skype 5.7 Beta on Windows or Skype 5.4 Beta on Mac will be prompted to enter in their Facebook credentials. Once logged in, Facebook friends will be presented on the Skype buddy list and a video chats can easily be initiated. Skype also said it has added a group screen-sharing feature for its Skype Premium Windows users, an option that was released in an earlier Mac OS X update. A video of Skype’s Facebook calling integration follows after the break.

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Adoption of Apple’s latest version of OS X stalled in October following a strong start that saw OS X Lion downloaded more than 1 million times during its first day of availability this past July. Ad network Chitika analyzed its recent traffic and found that Lion’s share among all operating systems is just over 1.5%, barely a blip on the radar. Usage of the new OS had grown at an average rate of 4.05% each month between June and September, but since then its share has increased at an average rate of just 0.98% per month. Read on for more.

Lion’s growth in usage share among other versions of OS X also fails to impress. Chitika reported in late September that Lion’s usage share had climbed to 14.18% since launching, as Snow Leopard dipped to a 55.5% usage share. In just over a month since that report, Lion gained less than 2 percentage points to reach 16% and, surprisingly perhaps, Snow Leopard’s usage share increased half a point to 56%.

“Apple’s ‘most advanced’ operating system OS X Lion (formally OS X 10.7) hasn’t exactly been their most popular release,” Chitika’s Ryan Cavanagh wrote on the company’s blog. ”According to Apple’s Press page, Lion sales were hot over the first few days, even seeing over one million downloads in the first day. However, since then the latest version of OS X has faced criticism from both users and reviewers alike.”

Cavanagh suggests that issues such as Wi-Fi instability and poor battery performance on MacBook Pro models could be among the causes of hesitation among Mac users. ”Lion’s adoption rate has been less than stellar, to say the least,” Cavanagh added. “While we are seeing consistent monthly growth, Lion isn’t taking off the way some had anticipated.”

Just-released data from Net Applications shows that Microsoft’s share of the PC operating system market continued its slow decent in October as Apple’s Mac operating system and Linux both showed narrow gains. While Windows is still the overwhelming market leader among desktop operating systems, the platform slid from a 92.44% share in September to a 91.86% share last month. Over the same period, Apple’s Mac OS climbed from 6.45% to 6.94% while Linux inched up from 1.11% in September to 1.19% in October. Microsoft’s share of the computer OS market is expected to continue its slow decent until the second half of 2012, when it is expected to launch its next-generation Windows 8 operating system that marries a full-blown desktop OS with a light-weight mobile platform for tablets and other emerging devices. A chart illustrating October desktop operating system market share data from Net Applications follows below.

The eventual arrival of iMessage on OS X, in some form, is almost a foregone conclusion at this point, but a new report claims to confirm that Apple is indeed working on bringing it to the Mac platform alongside AirPlay Mirroring. Citing multiple anonymous sources, 9to5 Mac says Apple is already hard at work bringing the services to OS X, though it is apparently unclear whether or not the efforts will bear fruit. AirPlay Mirroring will theoretically allow OS X users to mirror their Mac display wirelessly to an Apple TV while iMessage will let users carry on conversations from Mac computers just as they can now with the iPhone, iPod touch or iPad. The report says Apple is also currently debating whether or not iMessage should be integrated into Apple’s iChat app or introduced as a standalone app, and a concept video of how the latter scenario might work follows below.

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A recent report from Net Applications suggests that Apple’s iOS and Mac OS X operating systems both achieved a record high global market shares during the month of September. iOS had a global market share of 54.65% for the month, up from the 53.04% grip it had on the market in August. iOS is trailed by Java ME with an 18.52% market share, Android (16.25%)  Symbian (6.12%) and BlackBerry (3.29%). Mac OS X reached a record high 6.45% share of the operating system market during September, up from 6.03% in August, which is dominated by Microsoft’s Windows (92.44%). Linux has a fraction of the market with a small 1.11% piece of the pie. Apple is expected to take the wraps off of its next iPhone during a press conference in Cupertino on October 4th, and we’ll be reporting all the news as it breaks.

Read [Net Applications] Read [2]

Mozilla on Tuesday pushed out a new version of its popular Firefox web browser for Windows and Mac computers. Mozilla released Firefox 6 on August 16th, just over one month ago, and version 7 is already upon us, reaffirming Mozilla’s commitment to the world’s second most popular web browser. Firefox 7 brings with it a host of changes, the most notable of which is perhaps “drastically improved memory handling” and other speed related improvements. As of August, Net Applications shows Firefox’s global browser share as 22.57%, behind Microsoft’s Internet Explorer (55.31%) and ahead of Chrome (15.51%) Safari (4.64%) and the Opera browser (1.68%). Firefox 7 is available for download immediately from Mozilla’s website, which is linked below.

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Microsoft’s Windows operating system continued its slow decent in September as Apple’s Mac OS and Google’s Android platform again showed gains. Advertising network Chitika’s research division, Chitika Insights, published an infographic on Monday outlining operating system usage share on its network in the month of September. After losing nearly three-quarters of a point last month, Windows again dipped 0.592% to land at 77.7% for the month of September. The Windows OS has now dropped a total of 1.35% since July. Apple’s OS X platform showed the biggest gains in the month, jumping 1.039% to hit double digits at 10.6%. Google’s Android OS gained marginally in September to reach 3.3%, and Apple’s iOS dipped to 5.2%, shedding 0.301% of its usage share as the world waits for the iPhone 5 to launch next month. Chitika’s full infographic follows below.

Security blog Defense in Depth has found a glaring security flaw in OS X Lion that enables hackers to change the password of any user on a machine running Lion. “[While] non-root users are unable to access the shadow files directly, Lion actually provides non-root users the ability to still view password hash data,” Patrick Dunstan from Defense in Depth explained in a recent blog post. The result is that anyone could use a simple Python script, created by Dunstan himself, to discover a user’s password. It gets worse. Reportedly, OS X Lion does not require its users to enter a password to change the login credentials of the current user. That means typing the command: “dscl localhost -passwd /Search/Users/Roger” will actually prompt you to set a new password for Roger. As CNET points out, a hacker could only take advantage of the known bug if he or she has local access to the computer and Directory Service access. CNET suggests disabling automatic log-in, enabling sleep and screensaver passwords and disabling guest accounts as some preventative measures to keep your Mac secure.

[Via CNET]

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There is hard evidence that Apple is looking to add iMessage support to iChat, according to a new report from MacRumors. This would further increase the size of the iMessage user base, expanding to the desktop in addition to being available on almost all iPhones, iPads and iPod touch devices. According to the report, a developer found code references to the following in the OS X Lion version of iChat:

@interface IMMessage : NSObject
{
IMHandle *_sender;
IMHandle *_subject;
NSAttributedString *_text;
NSString *_plainBody;
NSDate *_time;
NSDate *_timeDelivered;
NSDate *_timeRead;

With iMessage available on all Mac computers, your conversations will literally follow you and be available wherever you go, and I personally can’t wait. Read on for more.

Instead of having to use my phone when I’m sitting at a computer working, I’ll be able reply and start new messages without leaving whatever I’m working on or doing. With delivery and read notifications — and, presumably, support for multimedia file transfers — this will be a much more intimate experience than traditional IM, and it will also simplify instant messaging on all Apple devices.

Contrast this with Research In Motion, whose BBM service Apple is copying. RIM still doesn’t offer a desktop BlackBerry Messenger feature after years of users begging for one, and you can see how different each company’s strategy and product plans really are.

Apple’s iMessage instant messaging feature was announced only in June and has been available in beta form since then to developers, but starting as soon as the end of this month or the beginning of next, iMessage could be available on all Apple devices. And what was arguably the No. 1 reason consumers bought and used BlackBerry smartphones will quickly become yet another reason people buy Apple devices instead.

Microsoft executives took to the stage at the annual BUILD developer conference on Tuesday to give the world its first real look at the future of the Windows operating system. The reception, as you’ve likely read by now, has been overwhelmingly positive. In fact, Apple bloggers were apparently so flustered by the platform that they resorted to bombarding Twitter with jokes about cooling fans and Silverlight instead of stopping for a moment to realize that Microsoft is showing us the future of computing. The PC was the future, and it let people perform functions they never thought possible. Then the tablet was the future, and it let people interact with content in ways they never thought possible. Now, the future means all things to all people. Read on for more.

I’ve mentioned it before on several occasions, but the point is much easier to make now that Microsoft has given the world a better look at its vision of the near-term future of computing. PCs are not going away. They will continue to be the primary means of computing for business and consumers alike. Tablets are not going away, either. They will continue to provide a much more intuitive way to interact with a consumer electronics device. Microsoft’s vision, however, unifies these devices.

One platform to rule them all. The technology exists to enable users to carry a single device that is as portable and usable as a tablet, but also as powerful and capable as a PC. It has a battery that can last all day, but it can also run Photoshop, Excel and Outlook. It can weigh next to nothing and slip into a slim case, but it can also power two monitors and run proprietary enterprise software.

When Windows 8 is finally bestowed upon the masses, each and every user will have Apple to thank. Windows 8 as we’re seeing it today would never have existed if competition from the iPad — and the iPhone before it — had not illuminated a giant light bulb over all of our heads: platforms can be both capable and intuitive. Apple’s iOS is the most fluid, logical, user friendly mass-market platform in the world, and it has forced the competition to look at products in a new light. Companies have been incredibly slow to adapt, however, and that is why Apple is currently the biggest tech company in the world.

But the iPad was only the beginning.

Apple paved the way but Microsoft will get there first with Windows 8. A tablet that can be as fluid and user friendly as the iPad but as capable as a Windows laptop. A tablet that can boot in under 10 seconds and fire up a full-scale version of Adobe Dreamweaver a few moments later. A tablet that can be slipped into a dock to instantly become a fully capable touch-enabled laptop computer. This is Microsoft’s vision with Windows 8, and this is what it will deliver.

People debate it all the time, but the simple fact is that “real work” is significantly more difficult to do on the iPad or on an Android tablet than it is on a Windows or Mac PC. Debate all you want. Android and iOS apps are dumbed down and infinitely less capable, typing is on a tablet is a pain in the ass unless you carry a Bluetooth keyboard, and the experience as a whole is severely limited.

We are not living in a “post-PC” era today any more than we were on January 26th, 2010, the day before Apple unveiled the magical iPad. Apple would love a post-PC era, of course, since personal computers no longer represent the bulk of the company’s revenue, but Microsoft is showing us that there is a better way. And that better way, as it turns out, is a PC.

Down the road, Mac OS and iOS will merge into a single platform or OS X will adopt enough iOS-like characteristics that Apple will finally be comfortable with slapping it on a touch-enabled device. Lion is the beginning of this process, though I sincerely hope future iterations offer less resistance. At that point in time, Apple will be able to offer a computing solution that is infinitely more versatile and capable than the company’s current solutions. A solution like Windows 8.

If the iPad ushered in the post-PC era, then welcome to the post-post-PC era.

New data shows that usage of Microsoft’s Windows operating system declined so far in August while Apple’s OS X and iOS usage increased, as did usage of Google’s Android OS. Chitika Insights, the research arm of ad network Chitika, published an infographic on Tuesday showing that Windows’ usage share dropped to 78.282% so far in August from 79.049% in July. Mac OS grew from 8.895% in July to 9.551% in August, iOS grew marginally from 5.278% to 5.491% and Android grew from 3.135% to 3.245% in August. During the month in which Linux celebrated its 20th anniversary, usage dropped from 2.365% to 2.191%. Of note, Net Applications showed significantly different OS market share data in July compared to Chitika, with Windows holding 87.6% of the market, Mac owning 5.61%, iOS owning 3% and Android claiming 0.81% of the global OS market. Chitika’s full infographic follows below.

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Apple on Tuesday released OS X Lion 10.7.1 to Mac users with the following changes listed:

The 10.7.1 update is recommended for all users running OS X Lion and includes general operating system fixes that enhance the stability and compatibility of your Mac, including fixes that:

• Address an issue that may cause the system to become unresponsive when playing a video in Safari
• Resolve an issue that may cause system audio to stop working when using HDMI or optical audio out
• Improve the reliability of Wi-Fi connections
• Resolve an issue that prevents transfer of your data, settings, and compatible applications to a new Mac running OS X Lion

For detailed information on this update, please visit this website: http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4764.

The new update is available immediately via OS X’s software update utility. Hopefully there are also a few more changes hidden under the hood so we can start unchecking a few boxes in Lion Tweaks.