Chrome release cycle accelerated to four-weekly frenzy The Chromium crew has revved its engines and decided it will soon emit a new stable release every four weeks and create a new type of release for those who are built for comfort rather than speed. “For more than a decade, Chrome has shipped a new milestone every six weeks,” opens a post by Alex Mineer, technical program …
"...which may be a little concerning as it recently crept past macOS to become the third-most prevalent OS shipped with new PCs."
Which is the second most prevalent? I had a quick look at stat counter to see if I could work it out, but I couldn't see anything that would back this up. And by macOS do you mean OS X?
Think there's some confusing at El Reg between vendor and OS here - Chromebook shipments overtook Macs last year but places 1, 2 and 3 in the PC markets are all vendors shipping Windows machines.
Also, shipment =/= usage. All the stats from Gartner say is that more Chromebooks were sent out to retail than Apple machines were. It doesn't mean they actually sold to users, and even if they were, more MacOS machines will still have been in use in the wild simply cos they've outsold chromebooks for the majority of the last refresh cycle..
I tried to be pretty precise in the story by writing "the third-most prevalent OS shipped with new PCs."
I chose that language because you're right - ChromeOS has a smaller installed base than rival OSes.
But that base is substantial. PCs are selling at about 350m/year right now. So that's 35m+ ChromeOS devices we know of. Let's guesstimate that there's another 40m in use from sales in 2019 and 2018 and another 25m sold this year. Even on those lowball numbers that's 100m+ devices whose OS currently has an unknown upgrade path.
The question that remains then is what's the 2nd-most prevalent OS shipped with new PCs...
Windows is assumed to be #1; you state ChromeOS is #3 and macOS #4. While I wish it was possible, I don't believe Linux can be #2, but what else is there? Or did you really mean that ChromeOS is now the 2nd-most [...] ahead of macOS?
'tentatively starting with Chrome 94 in Q3 of 2021'
Interestingly, Firefox already releases on a 4-week cycle and currently has this schedule for mainline releases in 2021Q3:
2021-07-13 -- Firefox 91
2021-08-10 -- Firefox 92
2021-09-07 -- Firefox 93
According to the Chrome plan, Chrome will perpetually be 1, 2 or 3 releases higher than Firefox (depending when in Q3 they switch to the 4-week cycle).
Makes you go 'hmmmm'.
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