The latest Net Applications survey, which gathers browser data from "site visitors to our exclusive on-demand network of live stats customers," shows steady increases in those using Mac OS X to access websites in September versus a steady decline in users using Windows operating systems. Though the survey claims to reflect market share, which is normally measured in unit sales, it does use a consistent method to examine trends in user share.
When RBC Capital analyst Mike Abramsky downgraded his Apple rating on Monday - helping spark the sharpest selloff in the company's shares in eight years - he cited a survey that RBC conducted with ChangeWave that suggested that sales of Apple's hot-selling computers were cooling off.
RBC's version of the survey showed that the percentage of technology consumers who plan to buy a Mac in the next 90 days had dropped from 34% in August to 29% in September, the biggest such decline in more than two years.