Apple Sells Two Million Copies of Leopard in First Weekend

[EagerDragon]

A valid point, many manufacturers will load Windows on there machines. They still have to sell those machines to customers though. Whilst a number of large companies will but them, fewer consumers (particularly those looking for a laptop) are interested.



The DVD is scanned to check for faults, so surely that is a good thing. AT least they get a chance to replace the installation disk, leaving their files and disks untouched.

Unlike other OSs where is ploughs on with the installation regardless of whether the installation disk is in good working order.



It would be interesting to see Leopards opening night vs Vistas opening night. From what I heard no-one queued for Vista (that could be wrong).

As had been pointed out, this affects the small proportion of users using APE.

About the Vista queue, that depended on the store, some saw none and some had like 8 people in line, LOL.

Not all consumers are savy, so they will take the machine with Vista installed. Those that are in the know, insist on machines with XP instead. Manufactorers are complying with those requests after M$ gave in and allowed them to sell XP.

 

[jaw04005]

So how many copies of Vista have been sold in two days? A month? So far? Just curious. Comparing the two should give a good indication of how well Mac OS X does over Vista, and which OS actually adds features users will use and use effectively.

Vista sales ...

"Microsoft had previously said that it had shipped 20 million copies of Vista in its first month and 40 million copies of Vista in the first 100 days."

From Paul Thurrott's SuperSite blog
—http://community.winsupersite.com/blogs/paul/default.aspx

"According to Microsoft, the 20 million Vista copies sold include licenses sold to PC makers, copies of retail full and upgrade versions sold to retailers, and upgrades ordered through the Vista Express Upgrade program between January 30 and February 28. By comparison, Microsoft sold less than half that number of XP licenses in its first 30 days of availability and announced in January 2002 that it had sold 17 million copies of XP in its first 60 days of availability."

http://www.windowsitpro.com/articles/index.cfm?articleid=95578&cpage=4
—Windows IT Pro

 

[darthraige]

I wonder how long it took Vista to reach 2 mil units?
M$ does counts machines sold with Vista Install in that number.

Did a little poking around. lol

Back in mid-May Microsoft indicated that it had managed to sell 40 million copies of Microsoft Windows Vista OS in the first 100 days after the company released its long-awaited software for consumers.

And Jaw04005 beat me to it. lol ^^

 

[jholzner]

The DVD is scanned to check for faults, so surely that is a good thing. AT least they get a chance to replace the installation disk, leaving their files and disks untouched.

Unlike other OSs where is ploughs on with the installation regardless of whether the installation disk is in good working order.

That's true but you can just skip that step. It takes a long time for it to scan the entire DVD. I let it do it because I'd rather be save than sorry but I bet a lot of people just skipped that option. Not that it's anyones fault but their own.

 

[minik]

Well, as far as the blue screen issue, you should check out this article. It is not Apples fault but APE, which is a non sanctioned piece of software.

[edit] the article has been updated to point out that some reports of the blue screen issue didn't involve ape. Still an interesting read.

I did get a 'blue screen' on my Mac Pro by choosing the upgrade method, however it went to normal in a minute later. No APE or any other mod before the upgrade.

Anyway, I stood in-line for Panther, Tiger, and Leopard. The Leopard line was overwhelming. Since I have 3 Leopard-capable Macs at home, I picked up the family pack and a free Leopard T-shirt on the spot.

Couldn't be happier. I keep showing it to my colleagues.

 

[~Shard~]

I hear you, but they're still making a ton of money Let's see what the future holds. In the mean time, let us all bask in the glory of hugh Leopard sales!!

Oh yes, they're making stupid gobs of money, no question there...

 

[ucfgrad93]

Wow, this is great news for Apple. I'll probably get a copy next month.

 

[Yateball]

I expected the numbers to be high but certainly did not expect them to be that high. Leopard is great though so it's not too surprising.

Although reviews have been almost all positive... the visual tweaks are taking a lot of heat. I personally like all of them. The blue orbs aren't THAT hard to see, and the reflective dock looks really, really good.

Just varies by opinion I suppose.

Anyway, good for apple!

 

[MacVault]

Wow! Great! Now just imagine how many billions Apple would have sold if Leopard had launched with support for other x86 hardware!

Take That, Apple!

 

[LaDirection]

I think the number is going to grow beyond the wildest dreams of all.

The tide is really turning.

I just spent some time on PC blogs and one was 90% full of PC users who were switching or had switched to OS X and in particular Leopard has them wowed. I include one typical entry from such a PC blog here
From Another Blog on a PC site: The article is lame but read the blog at bottom of the page! http://informationweek.com/blog/main...html#community
commented on Oct 30, 2007 5:56:03 AM
"I'm an MSc. in Computer Science working professionally with software development on Windows platforms for 12 years. Last year I realized seeing a friends iMac with Intel processor that, hey, this good looking machine is a PC. Great, I can buy it and run Windows on it. Would be fun to try out Mac OS also (which I have not even turned to look at before) for private stuff like photos, music and film which it said to be good at.

After 3 months I do NOT have the strength to log into Windows. It sucks, for real! I have defended Windows and loved it for 12 professional years, I know it inside out. I gave it all up in 3 months. Really! In comparison it really is worse in most aspects. And as Mac OS X has a UNIX core there is no problem to get under the hood like everyone seem to think, I would say it is the other way around. Anyway, most people do NOT want to get under the hood. You should not HAVE to get under the hood to perform basic stuff which you sometimes need to do in Windows.

Let's leave deep IT and look at stuff most people at home and at work use. I want even go into the Mac OS X built in Movie/photo/music stuff, it IS awsome. Let's look at the Office suit. I know of no-one during my professional years who wouldn't kill for beeing able to use a better word processor than Microsoft Word. Why not try out iWork Pages? The document looks better before you even start writing, and you can actually do real page layouts and typograph stuff (and it is cheaper). As well as open and save in .doc format AS WELL as .pdf, .rtf. Ever used Powerpoint? Check out iWork Keynote. You almost don't believe your eyes! And Powerpoint is what we sit and use in all offices all over the world creating crappy looking presentations paying more!

After starting using Mac OS X and the bundled software I CAN NOT believe that the world is still using Windows. The main reason I think, like for me, is that we do not know that there is an alternative. We think Macs are for "media" guys. I cannot think of one single thing I miss from Windows and that I think does something better than can be found in Mac OS X. New Leopard looks fantastic with real new groundbreaking feaures for everyday computer users which makes you more productive than ever.

I bought Apple shares for every penny I had to spare last summer. The tides must be turning now, I can hear it everywhere, I can see it everywhere. Why don't you join the movement?"

Windows is still necessary for business environement, professional 3-D workstations and gamers because there are no Mac equivalent for most of their softwares.

However 90% of the people buying computers for their homes (casual users) have no reasons NOT to get a Mac. It's no surprise that over 50% of Mac users are over 50 years old!

 

[jaw04005]

And Jaw04005 beat me to it. lol ^^

Just barely, darthraige. As you can see from the Vista sales figures, we're not going to take over the world anytime soon.

Wow! Great! Now just imagine how many billions Apple would have sold if Leopard had launched with support for other x86 hardware!

Take That, Apple!

And once again, Apple is HARDWARE company. We tried this remember? Mid-90's? Apple almost went bankrupt.

 

[darthraige]

Wow! Great! Now just imagine how many billions Apple would have sold if Leopard had launched with support for other x86 hardware!

Take That, Apple!

Now, getting Leopard with Hardware purchase, does that count as a sold Leopard? So if I wait for the new MacPro and get Leopard pre-installed on it, does that count as 1 bought Leopard?

 

[darthraige]

Just barely, darthraige. As you can see from the Vista sales figures, we're not going to take over the world anytime soon.

We probably both hit "submit" at the same time. haha. I came across too many articles and tried picking the best one. lol

 

[Yateball]

Now, getting Leopard with Hardware purchase, does that count as a sold Leopard? So if I wait for the new MacPro and get Leopard pre-installed on it, does that count as 1 bought Leopard?

Good question.... but probably not

 

[EagerDragon]

Probably not long since Windows PCs have 90%+ marketshare so when Vista came preinstalled, that's a lot of copies.

There was an article that anounced that Vista sold 2 mil units in the first 4 months or so and that included the copies that were installed from the manaufactorers.

However the manufactorers are also shipping a lot of XP to savy consumers and to businesses that do not yet want to adopt a new OS, some take 2 1/2 years to switch to a new OS.

You have to measure it against the install base, 5 mill out of 210 mil installed XP base is nothing. On the other hand, 2 mil out of 20 mil Macs is a heck of a lot more.

I plan to live long enough to see Apple reach 51% of the market, but then again I plan to live to 300.

 

[LaDirection]

Wow! Great! Now just imagine how many billions Apple would have sold if Leopard had launched with support for other x86 hardware!

Take That, Apple!

Yes! and just imagine how many people would run it on a cheap low end dell instead of a $2,000+ iMac, thus forcing Apple, who's hardware-based business rakes in more gross margin from computers than ANY other PC vendor while selling great softwares like Final Cut and iLife at ridiculous prices to sell MORE hardware, into bankcrupcy.

Great plan, Sherlock!

 

[jaw04005]

Now, getting Leopard with Hardware purchase, does that count as a sold Leopard? So if I wait for the new MacPro and get Leopard pre-installed on it, does that count as 1 bought Leopard?

Yes. It counts. All pre-installed, upgrades, maintenance agreements, etc count towards the officially tally.

 

[hscottm]

I poked around for any available data on Vista retail sales (because thats a better sign of "demand" than the pre-installed copies that Dell et al force on customers).

http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&articleId=9011360

interesting note (source is NPD) is that it says vista sales significantly lag XP sales (by 60%!). Thus the 2M for Leopard in a weekend (versus ars technica's estimate of 2M Tiger in a month suggests a much stronger consumer demand for OS X versus Windows.

Would like to find actual sales numbers, not percentages.

 

[~Shard~]

We probably both hit "submit" at the same time. haha. I came across too many articles and tried picking the best one. lol

Good question.... but probably not

Actually I'm pretty sure it does. It comes down to accounting, inventory and line items. For every sale, not only is a Mac being sold but a licensed copy of Leopard, iLife, etc. Each item, hardware or software, is reflected as its own line item and as such, a sale is recorded for each of those items for each purchase made.

 

[EagerDragon]

Now, getting Leopard with Hardware purchase, does that count as a sold Leopard? So if I wait for the new MacPro and get Leopard pre-installed on it, does that count as 1 bought Leopard?

I do not think Apple sold that large of a number of Macs in just a weekend. So even if they were counting it, the Macs sold in that weekend are probably a lot less than 200,000 or 1/10 of the OS total units sold.

M$ counts the ones that are installed in the systems so I do not see why Apple would not.

 

[~Shard~]

I do not think Apple sold that large of a number of Macs in just a weekend. So even if they were counting it, the Macs sold in that weekend are probably a lot less than 200,000 or 1/10 of the OS total units sold.

That's my thinking as well. Although Apple counts new machine sales as well in the Leopard tally, how many new Macs were actually sold during those first 2 days? Probably not enough to skew this figure I'm thinking....

 

[jaw04005]

I poked around for any available data on Vista retail sales (because thats a better sign of "demand" than the pre-installed copies that Dell et al force on customers).

http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&articleId=9011360

Well, then Apple would have to remove upgrades, pre-installed, developer and maintenance agreement copies from its final tally also.

The change from XP to Vista, was that the majority of Vista sales were with new machines (partly because of the pent-up demand for new computers thanks to Vista's delay and more stringent system requirements).

Unlike Mac users, Windows users tend to get new operating systems with system purchases. Mac users tend to purchase more upgrades (proportionately as to user base since Apple releases upgrades on a more regular basis than Microsoft). The only Microsoft operating system that can even compare to a new Mac OS X version launch (hype, publicity, etc) was Windows 95.

 

[EagerDragon]

Correction

Windows sold 20 mill in the first month (including the ones in computers).
http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/features/2007/mar07/03-26VistaDebut.mspx

Still nothing compared to their XP installed base.

 

[Orng]

About to attach TM drive and a target to a Tiger boot ... this might not get around this issue ... but I will soon know.

Why don't you plug in the second hard drive, then look in the first hard drive... find a folder called backup.backupdb (or something like that) then just drag and drop it to the second drive?

It may or may not work exactly like a time machine backup but at least you can browse your files in there.

 

[bignumbers]

One phrase in Apple's announcement that's been lost in discussion:

(or delivered in the case of maintenance agreements)

I doubt they have a million maintenance agreements but they've been pushing them lately. In August we wanted to buy ten MacPro's. I called our Apple rep and said we wanted to buy them now, but didn't want to pay $129 for Leopard upgrades in two months (otherwise we'd just wait until October). They wanted the business now, certainly before their end-of-year (Sept. 30).

So they added an OS X Maintenance Agreement to the order (about $1000 for ten machines), and reduced the hardware costs by the same amount, for a net free maintenance agreement. So we got our Macs fast, and we get free OS X upgrades for 36 months. And Apple gets to count that as ten "sales" on day one, even though we probably won't install it for a while until the dust settles.

And as a bonus, assuming Apple releases another upgrade within 36 months, we'll get that one for free too. And I'll bet Apple will count that as a sale then!

Given how easy this happened, I'll bet Apple was doing a lot of this to prevent folks from holding off large hardware orders.