Mac vs. PC: The Pirate Edition
Written by Ernesto on February 06, 2009The Get a Mac campaign is famous for comparing the troublesome PC with the much hipper Mac. In a series of commercials the Mac displays its superiority over the Windows based PC. Unsurprisingly, the ads never covered BitTorrent etiquette, because Windows users are better ‘pirates’ compared to their Mac counterparts.
BitTorrent is a filesharing protocol, so it goes without saying that sharing is an important part of its usage etiquette. The more someone shares, the faster everyone is able to download, and again share this data with others.
We thought it would be interesting to compare the users of different operating systems on their sharing behavior. Therefore we decided to take a closer look at the share ratios of Windows, Mac and Linux software on The Pirate Bay. The results are quite interesting and indicate that Windows users share twice as much as their Mac counterparts.
In order to calculate the share ratio we simply looked at all the seeders (completed downloads) and leechers (still downloading) on the torrents in the software category on The Pirate Bay. The share ratio is the number of seeders divided by the number of leechers. So, the higher the ratio, the more users share.
In the table below you can see that there are much more torrents for Windows software, 49345 compared to 2952 for Mac software and 1271 for Linux. Nevertheless, those downloading Windows software tend to share the files for longer, even compared to the Linux users.
| OS | torrents | seeders | leechers | share ratio |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| torrentfreak.com | ||||
| Windows | 49,345 | 327,876 | 128,728 | 2.55 |
| Mac | 2,925 | 35,264 | 29,520 | 1.19 |
| GNU/Linux | 1,271 | 2,775 | 1,991 | 1.39 |
Not listed in the table, but worthy of note, are the average number of downloaders per torrent. Mac software is in the lead here with 22 downloaders, followed by Windows with 9 and Linux with a measly average of 4 peers per torrent. Although we can conclude that those who download Windows software share more compared to others, the ratios for Mac and Linux software aren’t bad either. It can get a lot worse – Xbox 360 downloaders don’t even make a 0.3 share ratio.
Of course, the term ‘pirate’ obviously doesn’t apply to all downloaders either, especially not for the Linux group. It is interesting to see the huge differences in share ratios between the different categories though; perhaps Microsoft should consider building their next campaign around these stats. Sharing is caring, right?
Previously: The Pirate Bay Plans to Sue IFPI
Next: Torrent Site ‘Franchise’ Eliminated by BREIN
143 Responses
Well, Macs generally suck anyway.
I think it’s natural that people are taking advantage of the free, but money-losing promotion method. =P
Well, I guess everything has it’s good and it’s bads. :)
MAC Go MAC GO!
Honestly there is more pc’s in the world so im thinking this may or may not be a little biased, most average people only own a pc, hence it would be the tool they use, im not saying this is bad reporting or that im standing up for a specific operating system, as i use all three and im all for piracy im just wondering about the whole able to be compared equally thing
Just because there are more pcs doesn’t matter
“Nevertheless, those downloading Windows software tend to share the files for longer, even compared to the Linux users.”
This report doesn’t show a whole lot, there are far more PC’s then macs, and there are far more programs (including games, which mac cannot do) for windows instead of mac.
Your comparing a mountain to an ant hill.
Take a look at the market share.. i mean what else would you expect?
Your willing to spend $3,000 on a Mac but not $20 for a DVD….
“including games, which mac cannot do”
Idiot.
http://img87.imageshack.us/img87/9334/macyu6.jpg
“including games, which mac cannot do well”
Fixed.
“Your willing to spend $3,000 on a Mac but not $20 for a DVD….”
BECAUSE we spent $3000 on a mac, we can’t AFFORD a $20 DVD.
These stats are worthless though. They track the number of windows, apple, and linux TORRENTS, not their users. I download plenty of windows software and I’m a mac user. Furthermore, plenty of windows users download Apple torrents (Search osx86).
A more interesting article might cover the seeding habits of users by BT client.
Then there are guys like me who run ?Torrent under wine and artificially inflate Windows numbers at the expense of the Linux numbers.
you’re an idiot, son.
“his report doesn’t show a whole lot, there are far more PC’s then macs”
so?
100/100 and 100 000/100 000 are the same, absolute numbers dont affect ratio.
You’re forgetting that most Linux software is copyleft to begin with and installed from repositories, not torrented. So, only things like Cedega and such are on P2P, because only they need to be.
anyone who has taken a statistics class see whats wrong with these numbers. sure they may be right… but are they the right numbers for what tf is trying to say.. think about it
Once confusing thing in this article is the reference to comparing windows/mac/linux users, then using software which runs on each platform as the reference point.
What is does show is that people downloading windows software share better than those downloading mac/linux software. There is no information based on what OS the user is running when they download.
Thanks for explaining that logros (#12)
ATuin (#15) you’re absolutely right, although it’s safe to assume that most Windows software is downloaded by Windows users and vice versa. In the future we hope to look into the client IDs, that might give us a more accurate impression, and with some extra work we can also compare the share ratios of the different clients.
This is an excellent idea for a study. I think it deserves to be done far more carefully. Off hand, the software warez ecosystems are very different. (so you’re comparing apples and oranges.) Is there any data available on what clients are using? (if so, you might be able to use that for all torrents.)
Stuff like this is really hard to get right, just look at the two recent studies of who wrote/write wikipedia. They come to quite opposite conclusions.
@aes yes this can be done, but it takes a lot more resources to set it up since the swarms have to be monitored.
We’re working on it ;)
These data are accurate but limited, they show that people who download Mac software ’share less’ than people who download Win software.
I wonder, do these findings take into account that a lot of linux users ( such as myself ) use uTorrent via Wine thus mask ourselves as a windows user or are these counted as windows users ? If so, the findings would be flawed. I know of a lot of people using linux that use uTorrent via Wine.
“Your comparing a mountain to an ant hill.”
It’s per person, not altogether. Overall popularity doesn’t matter for this
The problem is that it only shows the number of people seeding and the number of people leeching. Leechers could be downloading at 10 KBps and uploading at 1000 KBps, and people with lower upload speed will probably seed longer than people with fast upload speed because it takes them longer to get a good ratio, but for this they get counted more.
It would be more interesting to see the % of people whose share ratios are above 1, 2, 3. etc. But I guess trackers don’t keep track of that kinda thing.
There might be a small subset of people who seed a lot (with superfast connections) who skew the ratios.
I have been using Ubuntu for a few weeks now, and I’ve had lots of trouble with Transmission, so I certainly understand why people would run uTorrent under Wine.
I’ll probably end up running Vuze.
I believe it has to do with the precedent the Mac architecture sets at “higher class” products at higher prices. Those in the Mac community are geared more towards paying a premium for everything.
I use a Mac due to making and playing live electronic music. I share everything I download twofold, sometimes threefold, because it’s just etiquette (sp?).
Alright. Another deliberate misuse of statistics. The data shows that their are more torrents available for Windows, and that on AVERAGE those torrents are better seeded. The data does not show that windows users seed more. There is a serious difference between these two.
“Nevertheless, those downloading Windows software tend to share the files for longer, even compared to the Linux users.”
This is speculative since your data does not show this conclusively. Your data merely shows that at any one point there are more seeds for an average windows torrent.
There is also no mention of the volume of dead torrents for either side. You could have a side that has a torrent with millions of seeds, and have hundreds of dead torrents, yet your data would show that that side was “better”
There is no data on sizes of torrents as well as their release date, and type of application vs. the ratios. Without this, you simply have a few data points, from which trends and such broad sweeping statements cannot be calculated or made.
Bottom line. This data doesn’t really support anything.
Individual perspective on the Linux side here. Given the shared/open source nature of many nix programs, and that many variants are available from repository there’s little need to seed a lot of oss. Most commercial software I find for Linux is relativly inexpensive since some of the code is taken from other projects, like cedega using part of wine for example, so there’s less reason to look to the bay for it.
Also as a general observation, the nix programs tend to be far smaller in sheer size since they generally use more shared libraries, rather than the more “self contained” programs found in windows. With that one could seed to a X multiple ratio and drop off quicker while still having done their part so to speak.
Sorry Mac guys, can’t really say anything for the beloved apple but the last time I really used one was back in the original power mac days.
It’d be interesting to gather statistics based off entirely open source products, or torrents that are under a share license.
It’s been my experience that torrents that are specified for Linux go much faster then the same torrent counterpart that is specified for Windows…
(example: Savage 2 for windows, and Savage 2 for linux)
“These stats are worthless though. They track the number of windows, apple, and linux TORRENTS, not their users. I download plenty of windows software and I’m a mac user. Furthermore, plenty of windows users download Apple torrents (Search osx86).”
Hehe, well that explained everything…
I’m going to argue that Linux is the best server, and therefore linux users are better seeders. I’ve had experience with this, and there is no proof in this article.
Therefore I can stand by my conviction!
But seriously, That is interesting data. I’m just very curious for more detailed data ;)
(I’m done now…sorry)
The number of torrents for a given platform says nothing about the popularity of that OS. In fact, one could argue that a lack of torrents actually speaks for the amount of high-quality *free* software available for it.
As for the ratios, while interesting, this probably speaks more about the Mac / Linux “community” on TPB – not the internet in general. Perhaps if you went to a more “Mac friendly” torrent community, you might find different numbers. Because, frankly, the selection of Mac and Linux software on TPB is crap.
As some of my fellow Linux fans have pointed out, most Linux software is indeed installed via repository, and therefore does not need to be torrented. However, there is one thing that as thus far not been discussed.
Most of the Linux software downloads in these stats are for live CD iso files. P2P is a popular method of downloading these files, as they are usually just under 700MB. However, the torrents for these files are usually tracked by dedicated trackers, maintained by the distro itself. These torrents usually have great seed ratios as well.
For example, I just started the torrent for Ubuntu 8.10 i386, and it has 1,420 seeders and 78 leechers, for a ratio of 18.21! What I would like to see is some updated stats, taking into account the trackers for the several most popular Linux distros (Ubuntu, Fedora, Mandriva, Suse).
I don’t get it… does someone care to explain it to me in plain english, mainly: How come most of apple users are so full of shit ?
More PS’s on the world, what else, periodical tidal fluctuations and moon phases have influenced those results ?
From all my friends having Mac, no one seeds, no one. But somehow people running those ugly beige metal boxes leave them running 24/7 seeding their fav. shows…
Re.: Linux and uTorrent over Wine, agreed there are gazylions of ppl running in on their boxes, so can we get some portion of this 2.55 shifted to Linux :D please
*does = can :D English sprehen…
sorry
This is just a rough estimate you guys, there isn’t a need to get all “fanboy-ish” on us.
The way the numbers were obtained doesn’t show the whole picture when it comes to torrent activity; only software is being tracked.
It would be interesting to see what share ratio there was for other types of torrents, such as music, movies, TV shows, and anime.
I myself am a Windows user, but will often leave smaller torrents (less than 1 GB) seeding until their ratio is about 2 or so. If a given torrent is pretty well seeded, or is being spyed upon by MAFIAA agents, I will stop sharing it right when the ratio reaches 1.00. If it isn’t well seeded (and I’ve encountered a few torrents like this), I’ll let it go quite a bit, even up to a ratio of 4 or 5.
There’s a very simple explanation for this. How many people do you know who use a PC, how many of them have desktop systems? How many people do you know who use Mac, how many of those are desktops?
The proportion of notebooks to desktops is much, much higher on the Apple side, notebooks aren’t always on, even when they are on they don’t always have a connection, and even when they do have a connection there’s a good chance it’s not configured properly for seeding… they don’t make a good platform for building torrent ratio.
And all I get is a bucket of excuses from an apple user :D
Lets not forget the fact that macs are nothing more than software anyway, software that runs on intel hardware, which makes them nothing more than a fancy gui on a PC. Therefore macs don’t really exist except for the old versions that people have yet to upgrade away from, which they will inevitably do.
Therefore PCs have an even larger piece of the pie.
@Jared
Hey. Macs aren’t a fancy GUI on a PC. They’re Unix with a fancy GUI on a PC, damnit.
Although since PC really just stands for “personal computer”, Macs have always been PCs anyway.
The term became synonymous with the Intel platform thanks to the IBM PC and the many IBM PC compatible cloners, but then later it also became a synonym for Windows.
Which has resulted in a pretty confused, fucked up term over the years.
If you use it to simply refer to Intel hardware, then you also have to count most Linux machines as PCs, too. Therefore PCs are pretty much the entire pie. And what about AMD hardware? Does it mean they aren’t PCs?
These days, it’s better to just refer to computers by operating system, otherwise it starts getting real muddled real fast when you talk about Macs and PCs and if they should be categorized seperately or together or what, and you end up with statistics where everything falls under a single header.
Mac users exacerbating their stereotype by not understanding ratios.
Macs are indeed PCs and ever were. The only difference lies in the software, so it’s rather “Apple PCs” vs. “Rest of PCs”.
Regarding GNU/Linux users (which are most of the time also using PCs btw) ThePirateBay is not really a representative source since most of the GNU/Linux distributions and software are shared over seperate trackers like linuxtracker for example.
As long as you seed to 1, you’ve done your part. Also, I have a ratio of 2.3 on a mac.
I don’t get it why ppl buy mac its a midrange system with a high range price .
You really must be on crack to buy one esp now adays .
“I don’t get it why ppl buy mac its a midrange system with a high range price .
You really must be on crack to buy one esp now adays .”
Either they like the operating system (valid reason), they like the look of the machine (kind of valid reason), or they just want to be cool and trendy like the commercials (not a valid reason).
1) Many (mostly private) trackers will not recognise or allow mac based apps to connect so I end up having to use VMware/parallels (faking windows) if I want to share torrents.
2) I thought most mac users try to be clever and use port numbers OTHER than the standard range
3) (I know this is looking for trouble) The last computer virus or trojan I had was in 1998. Unless you count trying to run windows under VMware/parallels
4) Maybe mac users don’t download so many apps – as the OS comes with the basics already installed (no need to add Orifice)
Benny
There may be some reasons why people of one OS might download something of another OS. One reason might be that one is hoping to transfer to another machine to use it on, which may not have internet access or something. Another reason might be that it is a mistake. I am sure that, as people search for some software, that they do not carefully read which OS the torrent is for, and therefore download the wrong thing. Also, I am also sure that there may be a way to run software for another OS.
Someone give me a good reason I should use OSX as opposed to Windows or Linux, excluding the ability to use some apple proprietary software i.e. Final Cut Pro and if it’s speed/usage related post a link to the data not just a claim.
I hate Windows Vista.
One factor people never consider when comparing Macs vs Windows is that OSX comes with a lot of great software. iCal&Mail are better that Outlook and Sunbird&Thunderbird. iMovie and iDVD blow Windows Movie Maker out of the water. Garage Band does not have an included Windows counterpart. The list goes on.
I think the reason that there’s more PC’s seeding / having a better ratio is due to the fact that a lot of people living in poorer countries -which are likely to torrent more, are probably doing so on cheaper, commodity hardware versus more expensive Macs.
@Always Skeptical — you’ll probably just need to try it for your self… not too difficult given the OSx86 project makes most of the hard work easy.
I have real Macs, PC’s and Hackintoshes. I would much rather work on a Mac running Leopard (or really any other version of OS X) than a PC running XP or (especially) Vista.
No viruses or spyware really to speak of, less crapware programs, better sharing community — no “go here and click this banner 3 times, or install my l337 toolbar to gain access crap.
Granted I can’t buy software from the bargain rack at 7-11, but 99% of that stuff is shit anyway. With very few exceptions, if a program is really good, it will be available on OS X.
My .02 USD
You mean Mac-based thieves have less etiquette in committing crime than Windows-based thieves? No honor among criminals — how sad. I definitely think Windows users should be proud that they follow proper protocol when they are stealing off of Pirate Bay. It’s a true honor.
another pointless reason to have a Mac VS PC argument. who gives a fuck whats being downloaded more? obviously windows is going to be the most downloaded, because it is the most popular os. i use mac because i personally think it works better for the shit im running. i dont play games on a computer so that argument is invalid. im sick of these pathetic arguments and this is by far the most stupid one of its kind.
Everyone seems to forget that a lot pf PC users are tinkerers. Tweeking and overclocking their pc’s for max performance. Most Mac users just want a reliable computer for e-mail and word processing. You shouldn’t compare someone with a temperamental Ferrari to someone with a reliable family station wagon.
@48…
Ok, do you want a cookie?
Interesting article. I think part of the problem is not etiquette, but knowledge of bitorrent. I’ve seen lots more Mac users who have no idea what bitorrent is compared to PC users, perhaps that is part of the problem.
Oh an its good to see the usual “Macs are overpriced” rant again. That never gets old…
So Windows PC users are better at breaking the law.
Window’s software is really expensive compared to Mac Software. Accordingly, people are more likely to risk viruses by downloading it rather than just downloading it. Iwork 09 was $99. Office, for windows is $350.
I’ve been pirating on my mac for the past year, and I can pirate more efficiently than I ever could on my PC. For one thing, I’ve never had to reinstall OSX because it’s gotten too bogged down from all the shit I’d downloaded. I probably re-installed windows 5 times or more just because it would get so unstable.
#50 & #52 are very valid points
Way back in the day there were no good Mac torrent apps, and likely this is why the new bloods have no clue why they need to keep seeding, or at least seed to 1.0
I grew up on PC/Mac, but learned most of my stuff on PC, including torrents. Suffice to say I still seed to 1.0 or more on Macs.
@56: IMHO you’ve got it backwards. Mac software is WAY more expensive. Plus Office is nowhere near $350, try $99, or $15 if you are a student. Its all S&D: Macs have less users, and less users for a specific target market, therefore any software for that specific market will likely be fairly expensive, compared to PC with tons of users and thus much larger market segments.
Although I don’t have to worry about viruses (usually) if I use bittorrent on my Mac, it is MUCH slower than using windows. I usually load VMWare fusion and run Windows XP just to download through bittorrent.
ALL U PC IDIOTS ARE JUST HATING CUZ U CANT AFFORD A MAC, OR ARE TOO SIMPLE MINDED TO USE ONE
Well, I use mac and pc, and generally the mac torrents have a greater download speed. I think also that there are a lot of windows users that are not aware that they are still uploading when the download is finished.
Let’s just ignore that fact that PC users need to download pirated versions of their own OS because Microsoft won’t let them have more than 1 or two liscences. Mean while mac users don’t because they get an OS disk for free with their mac and have unlimited installs with it.
wow, what a waste of time, lets see where do we start. I think the obvious first..
windows has a much larger market share then any other platform, 93.30% according to wikipedia. With total torrents of 53,541 they should really be hitting 49,953 in order to reflect their market share.
Therefore I think your claim of windows users being more ‘pirate’ savvy is flawed as that implies they should be ahead of their share percentage rather than behind (as in this case).
Linux users have no need to download applications from piratebay as the majority of their software is free so of course they have less people using the site as they have less need.
Also remember that Windows has a lot of unexperienced users who use torrent programs but don’t really know how they work… So when they “close” the program when they’re done it is just minimized, and I’m sure many don’t know that you need to delete torrents if you want to stop seeding them. Good for us though!
I use Mac as my primary computer. However, when it comes to downloading torrents, I have to use Windows or Linux instead because ALL torrent clients on Mac consume too much CPU comparing to Windows.
I can have 10 concurrent torrents on uTorrent on my eeepc (atom) and UI is still responsive. Had it been a Mac, UI would be too laggy to my taste.
@65: Couldn’t agree more. Sometimes when I have large torrents, usually 10-20gb, and I try to pause or stop, it takes FOREVER and often just locks the program up. Thats the only real caveat for torrenting on a Mac.
@ Laminated
I agree. Not just getting bogged down, but I can download software and media without fear of shredding my OS apart with viruses and trojans on OS X, without slowing my operating system with virus protection. (However, it would still be faster than Vista is.)
Other things to consider that affect our “which platforms torrent more” discussion are virtual machines, and multi-platform users. My XP desktop runs 24/7 and I use it to torrent stuff i don’t want to wait for. My MacBook Pro is my main box and it opens and closes and travels constantly, so downloading a 5gb file on that can take weeks.
Also, using a source like ThePirateBay isn’t a good source on mac users. mac-torrents is where I visit for my Mac software.
Apple users simply don’t pirate as much as Windoze and Linsux, because our software is actually worth paying for.
@67: That statement isn’t really helping the low regard people have for mac users intelligence. The article is about share ratios, not total amount downloaded.
Well, of course, there’s more than twice as much PC than Mac, so obviously there is gonna be more sharing. This article is completely insane. Yes I have a Mac, for 2 years now, but I don’t care if you have a PC or a Mac. I switch to Mac cause I use my friend computer and I like it. Everybody like something different and I like Macs, I bought a Macbook Pro 2 years ago, and I’m so satisfy that I don’t even feel the urge to buy the new Macbook pro that just came out. Still works as the first day I bought it. I can’t say a Mac is better than a PC to everybody (to me it is) cause people have different ways to use a computer. I like to do video editing, love taking pictures and sharing those with my family, I’m not a professional, so i want something simple, but powerful enough to make it look good, iLife ‘09 works great for that. and it come free with your Mac. If you ever use a Mac you will notice how everything program since to work very close together, example, the Media Browser in apps like iMovie and Garageband. I’m happy with my Mac and if you are happy with your PC is cool with me. I know I’m done with PC , realistically once u fully understand a Mac, you will realize how windows is always going to be one step behind.
Did anyone take into account that there are many more PC users than mac/linux users? Therefore it would be safe to assume that PC would have more torrents as the demand is greater. Someone need to take an economics course here…Supply and Demand.
Using a Mac by the copyright Emii less.
Well what if mac user usually dont need to pirate their software because most of the tools comes right out of the box or they can buy good solutions for reasonable prices?
@ 69 DonDinero and 70 Truman
We used the share RATIO (seed/leech). So it doesn’t matter that there are more Win than Mac or Linux users.
@58: I’d have to disagree with you on the price point. Most Mac applications are quite cheap, in the $15-$20 range. And those which are more expensive are generally, either large professional apps or apps ported from Windows.
I pay for most of my apps as they are so cheap. Either way, apps that I torrent, are usually bought at a later date so who knows :)
—
I’d tend to agree with #65 and #66, the mac apps are generally more slower or buggy which is certainly a contributory factor
is it possible to play games on a mac when you use bootcamp??? cause whats cool is that now you can switch from windows O.S to mac osx on a mac!!! its awesome.. im a pc and mac lover but I prefer a pc because they are so easy to use and there is a whole lot more programs for it.. and plus software and hardware!!!
Well with my experience Mac user don’t download as much. 70% of programs I use comes pre installed and then there’s other programs i used that are available from actual website so there is no need to download a torrent. example, handbrake and iSquint, just google it and download it from their website for free. there a few other apps that u may need, but not many for average users. also i recently download the utorrent for Mac version and it works really well for me, another good one is Transmission , both seems to be really fast in my macbook pro
I didn’t have time to read all the responses, but I would take it up with the person who built XTorrent,the simply wonderful bittorrent tool for the Mac. It combines the searches with the torrent download and makes the experience easier. I would say that the software is less inclined to continue to seed after all torrents have downloaded. You can change this behavior, also the limit for upload is set by default to 15Kb so your torrents are finished long before any real data has been transfered to other users. Using uTorrent I can see the difference in preferences and it always wants to be on, Xtorrent isn’t set up that way.
I often let my ratio get up to around 10.. This one I’m seeding right now… 2.27..
–but I don’t use TPB for my torrents, I get them right from ubuntu.com
well it is a good idea about the bittorrent software but mac is still cheaper and available 2 every body because of its normal bughet rates and sppedy and high quality………./
macs are for clueless hipsters anyway.
Mac and PC… technically the same thing… Personal Computer…
Flawed precept in your statistics make this whole article another waste of time, just a place for fanboys and haters to fight what doesn’t matter…
(written on a mac, booted natively to xp, so there)
“Nevertheless, those downloading Windows software tend to share the files for longer, even compared to the Linux users.”
probably because a lot of users don’t know what a seeder is (and thus keep seeding long after they downloaded stuff). Not that OSX or Linux users necessarily KNOW that – it’s just that their demographics are a lot smaller (and there is a tendency to be less noobs using both systems)…
Take into account that osx runs on SOME hardware. I have used my hackintosh for more that a year but if it doesn’t work on your system theres a good chance you wont upload it.
Also most people are comfortable with something that just works, whereas OSX might take some work. Plus it doesn’t talk about all of the people who download linux legally from a direct link.
Why is the URL: “why-mac-users-are-better-pirates”? The article is clearly about PC users being better pirates, unless you consider hnr’ing good tactic.
I own both run both osX and Vista, and download everything for both in the Vista pc. Another factor is torrent download speed, and the fact that there are more windows torrents does affect this. Some torrents download very quickly, so there is less sharing going on, some download painfully slow, so there is a lot of sharing (not voluntarily) going on while the torrent downloads. It has taken me sometimes a few minutes to download a file, and sometimes many hours to download the same size. For the slow ones, I end up seeding way more than what I downloaded.
I don’t think this is an objective report, based on the fact that if you buy a Mac you get the OS in the box, but on the other hand most of the people owns OEM PC which comes with no OS pre-installed, maybe that’s why people used to download more windows than linux or Mac.
By the way, a lot of distros has the option to download the ISO’s files from FTP or HTTP directly, does it make some sense?
I own a MacBook Pro and have a lot of applications that I have bought on my own. I have dowloaded pirated editions of software before but I came to the conclusion that small developers who make the best software are going to quit making it if they do not make any money. Support the small developers of the software you like. More than likely it’s not that expensive and you will be helping a good cause.
mac sucks ass, fancy design to double the price, lol, what a rip of mac’s are :)
And all who own them are trendy idiots with the exeption of those who do video and image work on mac’s…thats the only thing that justifies owning a mac’trendy.
You forgot the fact that Windows users are mostly bad with computers and don’t understand the fact that an icon in the system tray means a program is running.
I’m sure if more users knew that, the Windows numbers would be about the same as the Mac and Linux numbers.
That is because most mac users don’t use torrents.
mac-bb
msj
etc
Lets see, this come to this Windows vs Apple vs the evil penguin. Mac dont need to pirate becuase there is nothing o pirate any way, the penguin people doesnt pirate because they are software socialist and the give “all” the applications away for free, the only people that do pirate is Windows people why? because is Fun!
Someone should notify the author of this ridiculous post that mac IS NOT AN OPERATING SYSTEM!! I run windows on my mac so there for some of those windows leachers are actually MAC users… get a clue!
should read :
windows
osx
GNU/Linux
well, i would guess that most people, given the choice of downloading illegal torrents that might possibly be infected with viruses, most would want to put them on a crappy pc. i know i would…
Mac users prefer usenet, where several well maintained groups serve the purpose. Security issues keep me away from torrents.
In all honesty and seriousnes, the reason for the double ratio on windows, is because you have a much larger user base, which logically includes a lot more “average” people that really have no clue about computers.
They might for example be downloading a torrent using FrostWire and after they download it, they don’t even have a clue that the software is still sharing.
More people, more change to get computer illiterates downloading.
reading through these comments is like playing spot the mac/linux fanboy
Hello, the results *look* like Windows users share more, however it is missing other contributing factors as well, here is my response to Gizmodo’s story which shows that Mac’s lower share ratio may be because of lower bandwidth availability in their countries:
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Maybe you should consider other varying factors, such as available bandwidth.
There are over 200 countries in the world, in the LEDCs (Less Economically Developed Countries), not as many people own a computer, and even less have access to the internet, therefore internet bandwidth is a lot higher due to less demand. As a computer user in an LEDC will have less money, they may turn to pirating to acquire software. They will also have to pick either Linux, Windows or Mac. They have to comprise between price, ease of use and looks. They want something easier to use than Linux and that costs less than a mac (it may also cost more to get Linux than windows as shops probably won’t sell it and you need a pre-existing computer (windows or mac) to acquire Linux).
Therefore, most people in LEDCs will acquire windows computers, and torrent with their higher bandwidth, enabling them to share more. This causes a higher average share ratio and greatly affects the results, as mac users will most probably mostly live in MEDCs (More Economically Developed Countries) due to a mac’s higher price. MEDCs also have less bandwidth due to more demand, and thus mac users will not be able to share as much due to lower bandwidth and restrictions (plus, mac users may have more disposable cash as they opt for more expensive computers, therefore they may buy software anyway), this affects the results leading to much lower mac share ratios than windows share ratios, while Linux is kind of in the middle as it is used less, but is free and will be used in any country, regardless of prices.
So Mac users are not necessarily ‘greedy little punks’, but more likely just have more bandwidth restrictions due to their locations.
In order to justify your comments, you should find out the proportion of OS share ratios in individual countries. You may find share ratios are a lot less in MEDCs like the UK and US, than in LEDCs.
My friend has a PS3 and uses it to do play back of files, but to download he does what I suspect a lot do: he built a cheap $150 Linux box to run 24/7.
Who cares…
seriously…who still uses slowmo BT?
BT is only helpful for recent files that lots of people like and you still need to count on them sharing.
OR…you can just go with newsgroups and have access to files that are hot or cold…and that are up to a year old….and still have 100% bandwidth access.
try downloading a 265 day old torrent that was not popular to begin with…and compare that to using a newsgroup reader to acess the same file. you’ll be done in minutes compared to never.
BT blows
i don’t really think abt the linux being inferior in doenloading to the other OS editions, becoz most of linux softwares are downloaded through the native “synaptic package manager” or through the linuxtracker.org [which you had previously blogged] and some distros have their own trackers as well, is it only the softwares that is included in that survey or games too
Ok! So I think I’m a typical Mac user. I work with windows all day and have 7 windows boxes in my house. I torrent on PC and only occasionally on my MacBook Pro since it’s a laptop. My windows server is my primary torrent box since it’s on 24/7 and connected by a cable. I do occasionally torrent something on the mac but since it a laptop i don’t seed on it. Why do some people seem to hate mac so much. Yea I know fanboys can be annoying but damn it’s hard to not love my macbook pro and it’s hard not to share the discovery of a computer that is incredibly stable and allow me to work on stuff instead of trying to keep it running or have to hack it to do what i want.
Wow, all this means is that there are more people using Windows computers on the Pirate Bay, and that there is more software for Windows. Way to waste time!!! Mac users get their software from way better torrent sites than public Bay.
wow that confirms everything I thought about mac users. I am a mac technician and one day the issue of torrent sharing was raise among 4 or 5 other techs. EVERY SINGLE ONE OF THEM boasted how quickly they stopped sharing when they finished a torrent. I thought they were joking so i quizzed them but no, they were actually proud that because of their utter selfishness they had gained something for free. The only logical reasoning i can come up with is that mac users are generally wealthier and therefore more selfish, maybe im clutching at straws.
how do you pirate free software ?
as a linux user
That’s cuz
Apple is like “F U Pay Me, You want this app – FU Pay Me.”
ANd apple fans are stupid and bow dawn and do it.
hmm…. it would be much more interesting if you were able to track all torrent shares based on operating system instead of just software shares.
As a Linux user, most of the torrents I download are actually free software but I use torrents instead of direct downloads or repositories because I have an unreliable connection and find torrents convenient.
How do you track how many Windows downloads are being done on a Mac?
How do you track that the guy using Windows isn’t doing so on a Mac?
This data is useless, it tells us nothing.
There is a major problem with these statistics. Mac users are far to cleaver to use crap public trackers like TPB. Well all use decent private ones like BS, StC and VN.
How can you think of bringing linux in this picture. Most of Linux softwares are free, not to mention even opensource most of the time. So why do you think of finding them on the pirate bay of all the places.
bullshit statistics. Since you can’t know how much seeders have seeded
In the windows section there are all the win distros. Linux distros are mostly tracked by the distro it self or at some distro trackers like linuxtracker.org.
The data is mixed up and can’t fully represent any party from the “3 OSes”.
Especially if you take linux distro trackers into the picture.
‘One “server” can’t represent the Internet.’
And with all statistics and already pointed out by other comments. Don’t say shit about anything until everything is taken care of and counts into the ‘whole picture’.
Just like the top10 statistics .. it presents us a view from some trackers not all trackers. So aboves statement is only the “TPB view” of things and as far as I’m concerned not the best data to represent the 3 parties mentioned.
But still nice numbers and thanks for the posting ;)
Dwm
So what this is REALLY saying is that mac’s are crap and Win PC’s are totally brilliant and Linux is just an afterthought.
No news there then… :)
what moron thinks that mac can do games?
I dont care about your crap emulation.. that shit doesnt count. MAC CANNOT DO GAMES. I dont care that mac can play tetris or some small shit game, im talking about real gaming. Guess what else can do ‘gaming’ according to you.. my phone.
Please stop breathing my air #7 meatmcguffin. You fail.
to those running utorrent under wine… deluge is exactly as easy and works natively…
http://deluge-torrent.org/
As always there’s a lot of false information going on.
What this shows is that Mac users share less than Linux and Windows users.
Most of my Mac apps are open-source, if not, free.
My MBP may have cost $A3199, but that’s in Australian dollars (approximately half price back then). Most Macs are less than $A2000.
Macs do have the capacity to play games but they lack developer support. Luckily there are some out there like Blizzard and Aspyr.
And now for some personal opinion; Macs make being a power user easy. One of the arguments always lobbed at us is that Macs are designed for babies and are too simplistic for anything other than email and web browser. They aren’t of course but they do raise a good point, Macs really do do things simply. On a fresh install I do be on the net within seconds. The first step is to open Safari and then…
I also OWN the a copy if OS that comes with every Mac I buy. Every prebuilt PC I see out there only gives you a restore disc. At any time I could install Tiger on my iMac G3 (which came with OS9) using the discs that came with my PowerBook or MBP. It wouldn’t work very well with 128MB RAM but I can still do it.
this thread is a huge waste of time. And yes i am mac user and shared 200gb in last year.
Just glancing at recent sales figures, it looks like Apple sells almost 2x as many laptops and desktops. This probably accounts for the stats more than anything, as people with portable machines are obviously less likely to seed for long hours.
As a side note, while there’s certainly some justification for negative Mac stereotypes, to dismiss them as simple machines for simple users is ridiculous. Walk into any professional recording studio/post-production facility and 9 times out of 10 you’ll find Apple computers.
I run a home studio with a quad-core Mac Pro and Pro Tools HD. Good luck finding a Windows alternative that’s as powerful, stable, and hassle-free. It doesn’t exist.
@64
If you want low maintenance torrenting on a mac, get Transmission. I usually am working 15-20 torrents, two browsers, iTunes, and playing WoW on a MacBook laptop, and I never stop the torrents, even at night.
Anyone who’s got any knowledge of the Mac warez community will know that nobody seriously uses torrents for that. You can get everything you need via UseNet and/or http filesharing sites.
Besides, surely if Windows users share more, that makes them even bigger criminals, no? ;-) ;-)
hi. most of the heavy seeding is done by broadband servers – rather than “normal” private individuals. These run mostly on Windows which isn’t quite fair in terms of share ratios vs Linux & Mac
(btw)
nice, i now have another reason to dislike macs, not the computers but the people that use them.
yep this is totally true i use a mac and i block my upload to 0kb/s.
I’m a total ass…
I torrent stuff on both a Mac and Windows.
xTorrent (I had to pirate a torrent program. There’s irony or something there…) and uTorrent 1.6
In my experience, the mac stuff has been rapid, whereas the windows always seems chuggish, as if we’re racing a steam train against the bullet train…
But I also found the mac downloads more reliable.
I believe it’s fitting to say,
“Arr! I be a PC!”
Major logic fail.
The only software I’ve ever P2Ped was Warcraft updates, and I doubt I’m alone. Macs have loads more functionality out of the box than PCs; thus the “Mac group” gets skewed towards the hardcore warez crowd.
Software P2P is not only not representative of all P2P, I’d wager it’s a very small minority. And for the record, my average ratio fluctuates between 7 and 8.
The Data?
Was this calculated over a long period of time or calculated from a weekend when HALO 3 was released ?
Because – I’d be more inclined to believe the Stats – if in fact this isn’t based merely on a snap shot instance during a peak Windows Software migration.
Also – by the by – I’m a Mac User and I do tend to let my Share to Leech Ratio hit 2:1 recurringly [and I'm conservative] – as do many other Mac Users I know.
MAC ? maybe the apple logo is still mac, cause the rest is INTEL procesor and LINUX code for the OS…
and anyway, for the price of a shitty mac, i can get you and fix properly a PC, I already did for recording studios and they are SO happy their PC DOES NOT HANG UP. while their mac was giving them hard times… not to talk about linux superiority over mac$%&$ (censored) ;-) if you like fancy desktop, try latest Ubuntu (free and soooo complete!)
so please. macmaniacs, the times of MOTOROLA procesors superiority is OVER!… that was in the early 90´s, no talking about the POOR and very limited offer of software for mac.
and, if you have some trouble with mac, you MUST go to some apple service, while almost anyone can repair a PC.
mac ? an anachronism for wannabee snobish $%&$%&$ (again censored), those who would eat anything an aggressive marketing will sell them
I hackintoshed my PC and I honestly don’t know why people love Mac. Explain it please. All my hardware works fine under OS X, but the same is true under Windows and Ubuntu.
Another reason to love using an operating system that is f**king 8 years old!!! But truly, why go Mac? I did for 10 yrs: ‘92-’02 and then had the common sense to save tons of money by building my own box with quality components I could choose (and get shafted with a crappy OS).
this only shows that most osx users don’t use shitty sources like TPB
The relevance of this escapes me.
I would tend to believe that their are fewer cavalier users of OSX and Linux than there are of Windows respectively. I would base this upon the cost of purchase, ease of use, compatibility, and the general needs of the people using the systems. Yeah maybe a few people who dont want to spend any money buy some hack job tower with Linux. But the average person who just wants something so they can get by is buying a $300 Compaq or Acer from their local Walmart. Stating cavalier user because, there are a lot of people who don’t know they can turn the file sharing off… There are a lot more people using Windows who dont know that than OSX or Linux.
Windows Users kill their Operating System 10 times as much as Mac Users. Thats why they need to download their stuff more often and thats also why they understand the problem of the availability of their software.
It’s not only that the above results are equivalent to the marketshares… its also less likely that you hold a share where there’s no download.
You should also not forget … that bittorrent is a tiny frame in the options of sharing stuff. Probably Mac-Users just dont use the PirateBay ?
I use both mac and PC, primarily mac (torrents run on my mac).
However, most of my torrented programs are windows, since my gaming machine (better specs) is running Windows.
Simply put, Mac users aren’t necessarily downloading mac applications, moreso with the ones tech savvy enough (not that it takes much) to dual-boot their machines.
I’m a Mac user, mostly because they were the computers I learned to use and feel comfortable with. I’d like to use whatever is best and cheapest, but I know I have problems with Windows operating systems—I don’t claim to be tech savvy. I think a lot of computers made for Windows OS look pretty sweet. But I’m Mac-dependent. Accepting that and moving on, my point: I always find more reliable applications and games on private trackers, therefore files from private trackers are the ones I tend to seed. I’m still seeding files from 2006 and always encourage people to request reseeds from me if they need to. But again, that’s on private trackers, not only because they feel less exposed, but because on open trackers like TPB, I’ve gotten torrents that led to 4GB of useless files that just don’t work. So maybe that’s why the stats on TPB look the way they do—the Mac users who do use it may be hitting and running, but they may also just be getting bunk files and justifiably deciding not to seed them. Also, as other people have said, I don’t get that much software from torrents. I’d say it is only 1%-2% of my torrenting.
Wow…. now that is fuckin funny.
I was reading and I thought the Mac users were responding in a much more mature and intellectual level… then i keep reading and nope…its still chock full of idiots.
You just cant afford a 3,000 dollar machine.
or Mac is better than your Windoze or Linsux…..lol
Relax, idiots its just a damn operating system……. a really really really expensive one…but ….
It’s stupid to look at this by software downloads. Even if linux users get stuff by p2p, it’s usually through a distro hosted tracker for iso images or something.
What you need to look at is that Client/OS of all activity on a site and then group by pirate/OS. IMO if someone is downloading normal linux software from TBP they’re pretty much an idiot…
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