The number of Web surfers using Macs increased to 6.6% in September, a 40% increase over August. At Lifehacker, which is reporting those results, they have a far higher percentage of readers -- 14% -- using Macs. Your peers who visit InformationWeek.com from a Mac fall between 7% and 14%, and their numbers are growing.The Lifehacker post is fortuitous because we've been doing lots of analysis of the Mac's role in business, and that's sparked a lot of discussion among the Mac faithful. We did some research that found mostly lukewarm interest in purchasing Macs for corporate applications. (Macs in corporate America are a very different issue than the number of Macs being used to surf the Net.)

But the Mac population on our site, like the broader Internet, is clearly on an upswing. Year to date, 9.6% of our visitors are using the Mac OS, making it the No. 2 operating system among those visiting our site. That's a healthy percentage above the broader 6.6% of Internet users figure reported by Lifehacker. It's also a healthy gain over the 6% of visitors to our site who were using Macs in 2006 (if you're doing the math, that's a 60% increase for the Mac from 2006 to the first nine months of 2007).

I wondered whether the higher figures may be a result of the recent flood of coverage on the iPhone bricking dispute; it isn't. The figures are almost exactly the same pre- and post-bricking.

The numbers (below) also shed some interesting light on other OS issues -- Vista penetration, Linux usage, iPhone popularity.

InformationWeek.com visitor operating systems, year to date:

• Windows XP -- 69.5% of visitors

• Macintosh -- 9.6%

• Windows Vista -- 6.3%

• Linux -- 3.6%

• Macintosh (iPhone) -- .2%