In September, Apple's operating system ran on 8.2% of the computers that accessed the 40,000 sites monitored by Net Applications for clients, the company's data showed. The Mac's share of the operating system market was up over August's by nearly four-tenths of a percentage point, the biggest one-month gain since May.

Apple tends to post significant increases in September, according to Net Applications. Last year, for example, Mac OS X climbed by 0.45 points that month.

Historically, Apple has run back-to-school promotions into September to boost sales, especially to college students. This year's promotion, which ended Sept. 15, offered rebates of up to $299 toward the purchase of an iPod Touch or iPod Nano when bought at the same time as a Mac desktop or notebook.

In the last two years, Mac OS X's share has increased by 3 percentage points, a gain of 58%.

Microsoft Corp.'s Windows, meanwhile, continued to slip in market share last month. Overall, Windows accounted for 90.3% of the operating systems powering the machines that accessed Net Applications' metric network, a drop of 0.4 percentage points from August, when the operating system fell by nearly the same amount from July. That month was the last time that Windows maintained or grew its share.

Since the beginning of this year, Windows has lost 1.5 percentage points in market share.

Windows Vista's part of the operating system pie grew again last month, primarily at the expense of Windows XP. In September, Vista accounted for 18.3% of all operating systems, an increase of nearly half a percentage point over August. Windows XP, meanwhile, fell by more than 0.8 points to 68.7%.

If Vista maintains its recent pace, it should break the 20% bar in late November or early December.

Other data collected by Net Applications showed that Apple's iPhone accounted for 0.3% of the devices connecting to the Internet in September, double the share of June, the month before Apple introduced the iPhone 3G and dropped the price of the handset to $199.

Net Applications' operating system share and trend data is available online.

Read more about macintosh os in Computerworld's Macintosh OS Knowledge Center.

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