Do you remember when WX was supposedly on pace to surpass W7 by November?

NMS's end-of-January numbers are out, and once again, WX has managed modest gains at the expense of Windows XP, while W7 and W8.1 remain mostly unchanged. And, no, WX still hasn't caught up to its nine-year-old rival.

WX gained, of course, from 32.93% to 34.29% (+1.36); W7 ticked down, from 43.08% to 42.39% (-0.69); W8.1 ticked down slightly, from 5.71% to 5.56% (-0.15); and XP slid the most, from 5.18% to 4.05% (-1.13). Except for W8.1's, all of these results are above the ±0.5% "noise threshold," but WX's gains are not enough to encompass the losses of W7, W8.1, and XP. Some of those former Windows users are going elsewhere.

Where are they going, you ask? By the looks of it, Apple. Windows' overall market share slid from 88.51% to 87.79% (-0.72), while MacOS grew its overall market share from 9.02% to 9.95% (+0.93), propelled by MacOS X 10.13 (from 3.53% to 4.46%, +0.93). An overall decline in Windows' user base probably isn't something that Microsoft want to see; yes, WX gained more than a percentage point to start the year, but the fact that those gains are mostly coming at the expense of the 16½ year old XP, rather than the market-leading W7, can't be good news, either.