Apple today announced that it sold (or delivered in the case of maintenance agreements) over two million copies of Mac OS X Leopard since its release on Friday, far outpacing the first-weekend sales of Mac OS X Tiger, which was previously the most successful OS release in Apple’s history. Sales included copies sold at Apple’s retail stores, Apple Authorized Resellers, the online Apple Store, under maintenance agreements and bundled with new Mac computers. Leopard is the sixth major release of Mac OS X and is packed with more than 300 new features.
“Early indications are that Leopard will be a huge hit with customers,” said Steve Jobs, Apple’s CEO, in the press release. “Leopard’s innovative features are getting great reviews and making more people than ever think about switching to the Mac.”
Leopard introduces Time Machine, an effortless way to automatically back up everything on a Mac; a redesigned Finder that lets users quickly browse and share files between multiple Macs; Quick Look, a new way to instantly see files without opening an application; Spaces, an intuitive new feature used to create groups of applications and instantly switch between them; a brand new desktop with Stacks, a new way to easily access files from the Dock; and major enhancements to Mail and iChat.
Mac OS X version 10.5 Leopard is available through the Apple Store, at Apple’s retail stores and through Apple Authorized Resellers for a suggested retail price of US$129 for a single user license. The Mac OS X Leopard Family Pack is a single-household, five-user license for a suggested retail price of $199. Volume and maintenance pricing is available from Apple. Leopard requires a minimum of 512MB of RAM and is designed to run on any Macintosh computer with an Intel, PowerPC G5 or G4 (867 MHz or faster) processor. Full system requirements can be found at http://www.apple.com/macosx/techspecs
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “NeverFade” for the heads up.]
MacDailyNews Note: On June 6, 2005, Apple announced that they expected to deliver over two million copies of Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger by the end of that week (June 11, 2005). Mac OS X Tiger was released at 6pm on Friday, April 29, 2005. Therefore, it took 43 days to sell two million copies of Mac OS X Tiger vs. approximately 3 days for Leopard.
Microsoft’s Vista “sold” 20 million copies in the first month (February) or 714,286 copies per day or 2.143 million copies in the first 3 days.
“alot” is not a word
No surprise! There were hundreds of people lined up outside the Apple store in Columbus, OH on Friday night. I was kinda shocked at the crowd lined up for a software upgrade. Personally, I prefer to wait and apply that upgrade fee toward my next new Mac.
I made my point. That’s all words do.
ahahahhaha
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gotta love the “sold” with quotes, for Vista
Most of those “88 Million” Vista licenses “in channel” are bundled with PCs. Those going into enterprises like mine are immediately tossed aside as we put our enterprise image of XP in its place. So, yes, we are “licensed” to use Vista, but I don’t expect to see them in any but lab or test mode for the next year or so.
installed leopard on my macbook saturday with no issues. it’s absolutely beautiful and i haven’t run into any snags (other than an odd graphical glitch with garageband 3). go apple!
“anyone know how this compares to Vista on a relative scale of installed user base?”
Imagine an elephant’s ass. Then imagine a small pimple on it. That pimple is Mac OS X Leopard.
“MS does not announce how many copies of Vista are sold, only those that are in channel [ie. “sold” to OEMs].”
Which, from Microsoft’s point of view is Sold.
In the same way that when Apple ships a Mac or Mac OS X to Best Buy or an authorized reseller or a foreign distributor, or an iPhone to AT&T;they count it as Sold (Because rightly from Apple’s and Microsoft’s perspective, they sold it and somebody now has an obligation to pay them for it). They can’t play that trick with internal stores.
Apple could have easily shipped 2 million copies out to entities which have purchased them from Apple, but it’s highly unlikely that number of copies are in the hands of end users.
I’ll wait until Mac OS XI (that’s eleven, for everyone else).
Maybe Apple will name them over the planets.
Mac OS XI Mercury
Mac OS XI Venus
Mac OS XI Earth
Mac OS XI Mars
Mac OS XI Jupiter
Mac OS XI Saturn
Mac OS XI Uranus ( [giggles] Sorry, an oldie but a goodie)
Mac OS XI Neptune
Mac OS XI Pluto (Damn those astronomers who denied it ‘planet’ status. It will always be a planet, period.)
@ Brew”Mac”ster: Why didn’t I think of that!
One install of Leopard down, at first got an error about being out of disk space doing and archive and install. Tried again with archive and install, and off it went. Strange. Been running Leopard since Friday night, and I love it except for two things — no more hierarchical folders in the dock, thanks to Stacks, and getting used to that semi-opaque menu bar. Other than that, bliss. Time Machine kicks booty!
MW: Funny how the PC press still have to put in that “Windows for serious work” thing, like they’re still embarrassed about using a Mac or something. If Leopard trounces Winblows so bad, why are you not using it?
Doing my sister’s upgrade tonite, I expect it will be easy on her new aluminum iMac.
Microsoft’s “sales” numbers for vista include every boxed copy shipped to a store and every unsold PC with vista pre-loaded that’s sitting at a retailer or in OEM warehouses. Apple doesn’t count the product sold until a consumer actually buys the Leopard DVD or a computer with Leopard pre-loaded. So I it’s likely selling way, way better than Vista.
One thing I was trying to imply was that if the entire mac user base is around 25 million, then those 2 million copies sold in under 3 days reflects an adoption rate of approximately 8%.
So if the last quarter Vista installed user base is correct, which was over half a year since it’s release, it has a user base of approximately 88 million. Working backwards then similarly an 8% adoption rate would put the entire PC user base at 1.1 billion. I’m pretty sure it isn’t that high. Even if it is, it’s taken a long time to reach that milestone.
Point being, yes MSFT sells more OS’s. However, of the people who can actually install and utitlize a specific OS, Apple has beaten the pants off the Windows platform. The adoption rate over several months for Windows is lower than Apple’s in a couple of days.
What’s the downside again?
“Apple doesn’t count the product sold until a consumer actually buys the Leopard DVD or a computer with Leopard pre-loaded”
That’s true only for computers and DVDs sold by Apple’s own stores. With any other channels when it goes out the warehouse door, it’s a sale.
” if the entire mac user base is around 25 million, then those 2 million copies sold in under 3 days reflects an adoption rate of approximately 8%.”
If only 5% of them have support contracts on their OS, Apple just booked 1.25 million “sales” right there.
“8% adoption rate would put the entire PC user base at 1.1 billion. I’m pretty sure it isn’t that high.”
You’re right, it’s closer to 1 billion.
Well, I bought my mom a new Macbook on Saturday, with a drop-in copy of Leopard, so she’s one of the 2million. Of course, if it works well, then I’ll buy a family version of it for all of my Macs.
Rob, you’re right. Friday night at the Apple Store Easton in Columbus was crazy. My lady friend and I were there. The line was down the street and around the corner even with the threat of rain (it never did). Count us among the 2 million.
As for Comparison, if a leopard jumps on an elephant in the wild, that elephant will know it and he’s gonna need help getting that bad boy off of him!
Peace.
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Olmecmystic
P.S. Yo, MDN, what’s up with emoticons on here the last couple of days? I’m clicking on them but nothing’s happening. The one you see was done manually. Semi-colon, dash, right parenthese. Get on it. Thanks!
“As for Comparison, if a leopard jumps on an elephant in the wild, that elephant will know it and he’s gonna need help getting that bad boy off of him!”
Actually the elephant usually casually kills the leopard and gets on with whatever he was doing before the small irritation arose.
Elephants are much more dangerous to leopards than the other way around.
Oh Yeah? Well Vista shipped…a lot.
SO THERE! Let’s Dance!
—Steve Balmer
I ‘d love to upgrade to Leopard from Tiger badly. However, I heard complaints in Apple ‘s forum that Sun people said Java in Leopard is only version 1.4 and they need 1.6 for their work. If that is true, then that information stengthen my belief that I have to wait few more months, and until Leopard upgrade its Java version to a newer one as well. Some of the softwares I use require at least Java 1.5.
Oh, BOY!
What an afternoon/evening.
Did all the good stuff then said “load that sucker”. It said “Urp” and told me my HD was toast. ?HUH? Waddaya MEAN? Get out of my drive … OUT, I say! Please? Please come out? Come ON!
So I plugged my Firewire drive back in and … wow, I can use that for my boot disk – or toast that, too. Well, it installed there. Ran iDisk, the computer’s HD was NOT toast, installed there, then killed me some WoW monsters in one Spaces window.
Almost 1AM … think I will go to sleep, now. Tired, very tired.
Dave
I think it is amazing that Leopard, or any Mac OS X release sells as many as it does. It is so easy to just steal it yet people are WILLING to pay for it. How many M$ sufferers are willing to do so. I really feel sometimes people feel a degree of animosity toward M$ and actually would prefer to steal from them.
I know for myself, I have three installs every release, yet I always buy the family pack. I could easily buy a single user license and install it on all three. But I don’t feel the need to rip off Apple, I want to pay for their products. They make it so, so easy to stay legit I feel that needs to be rewarded by buying my licenses straight and on the level.
“I know for myself, I have three installs every release, yet I always buy the family pack. “
Congratulations on the 5 copies Apple sold you and counted towards this total.
What Microsoft really doesn’t want anyone to know is just how many copies of Vista are being returned in exchange for XP. Not only that, it’s being released as a “downgrade” ever so quietly.