If nothing else, the browser and operating system numbers from October showed the huge behavioral differences between Mac users and Windows users. Both Microsoft and Apple released new versions of their desktop operating systems last month, with Windows 8.1 from Microsoft and OS X 10.9 Mavericks from Apple. In raw terms, Windows 8.1 already has many more users than Mavericks—about double—but as a proportion of the actual user base of the two platforms, it's the Apple software that's in the lead. 10.9 percent of Mac users are on the latest version of the operating system. Just 1.9 percent of PC users are on the newest Windows.

In a month that also saw Microsoft release a new version of its browser, not a great deal has changed among desktop browser preference. Internet Explorer picked up 0.42 points, Firefox gained 0.10 points, and Chrome dropped 0.54 points. Safari and Opera saw a gain of 0.07 and a loss of 0.05 points, respectively.

In the mobile space, Safari remains king of the hill, up 1.74 points. Android Browser is still significant, gaining 0.68 points. The largest of the also-rans is Chrome, which is up 0.51 points. As newer versions of Android start displacing old ones, this number will eventually start eating into the Android Browser share. The latest Android 4.4 KitKat release should accelerate this, as embedded browsers within apps now use a Chrome-derived engine instead of the Android Browser-derived one. After eight good months, Internet Explorer had a stinker in October. It dropped 0.65 points, falling to the lowest level since last December.

With no Internet Explorer 11 yet on Windows 7, the latest and greatest release of Microsoft's browser has had little scope to make an impact on the market. Presuming that Microsoft follows the path set by Internet Explorer 10 and makes it an automatic update from day one of its release, we can expect to see what is, for Microsoft, a continuation of the relatively rapid adoption of the browser. Nonetheless, Redmond's browser is still a long way from the kind of transition timetables that Chrome and Firefox continue to manage. Both browsers do still have a legacy problem, with about five percent of Web users sticking with an obsolete and insecure version of Firefox or Chrome. However Microsoft's legacy problem is substantially greater, with 5.1 percent of Web users on Internet Explorer 6 alone and nearly 22 percent on Internet Explorer 8.

The widespread use of legacy software is also in evidence in the operating system share. While the OS X upgrade picture isn't as aggressive as that of Chrome or Firefox, with plenty of Mac users sticking to old versions, Apple's decision to make Mavericks free to anyone with a compatible Mac should certainly help its adoption rate. Available for just a few weeks, already one in ten Mac users is on 10.9; only one in 50 Windows users is on 8.1. Indeed, only one in ten Windows users is on Windows 8.x. Apple has done in a couple of weeks what Microsoft has only managed in a year.

It would not be hugely surprising to see 10.9 displace almost all OS X releases of the last five years. Even setting 10.9 aside, Mac users' adoption of 10.8 was much more rapid than Windows users' adoption of Windows 8. That's advantageous for Apple and Apple developers alike, as it means that they can use new platform features in their software much more aggressively.