Wow, that is about twice as many as I thought they had sold. With preorders and everything I was thinking the number was likely around 1 million for the first weekend. This should only encourage Apple for future OS releases.
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Apple Sells Two Million Copies of Leopard in First Weekend
- Thread starter bbarnhart
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Steve Jobs says Apple is a software company.
I agree, Apple makes all their Software at Cupertino, California. All their hardware made by contractors using standard parts (although they do the design.)
I think the profits are in the hardware, but the Actual value is in the OS.
Take away OS X and iTunes and Apple would be poorer, take away the Mac Pro or the Mac Book and replace them with similar things on the market (still running the same software) and I think they would cope.
So whilst it is true to say they profit more from hardware, their software is just as, if not more important.
There were some other things that he said were coming, but he wasn't going to talk about yet... I guess they were "too" secret...
No company can be all things to all people. IBM learned this the hard way and finally did the smart thing by exiting the PC business. They simply do not serve the PC market as well as they serve the Midrange server and other enterprise markets. My brother was managing a portfolio of entry level UNIX server products at IBM... they were consistently clobbered by products that were $2k cheaper with more bang for the buck... which is critical in the enterprise environment.
Apple's core competency is not in the pro-sumer/mini-tower arena... and I don't know who started spreading this delusion around that Apple should be there, but now every third forum denizen is repeating it ad nauseum. It's a bit more complicated than saying, "My god, Apple doesn't make computers for everyone but they should."
No, Apple's core competency is in two key areas... Affluent consumer demographics where the key uses are: word processing, email, internet browsing PLUS digital appliance integration (i.e. A/V toys); and high-cost, high tech industries like biomedical, music, and motion pictures. Both of these target markets have something in common... cost is not the deal breaker in their purchasing decision.
That is where Apple wants to be, so be it. For the size of their company they make a tremendous amount of money serving this niche. As Nicholas Hayek discovered when he resurrected the tattered Omega brand that was diluted by too many models spanning too broad a price range trying to serve too many needs, consolidation and focused target marketing is key to proportional success. Apple is a lot more successful (read: ZERO DEBT) than Microsoft could ever be at THIS small a scale... Why?
Culture. Microsoft has none. Apple has it in spades.
Apple has culture. Large corporations looking for bottom dollar and people looking for "affordable towers" don't care about culture. Yuppies and midsize corporations with deep pockets and a sense of aesthetics and industrial design (hint hint... prepress graphics) do. The family earning $350,000 can justify the purchase no problem... The question isn't cost... The question is if the computer goes well with their $12,000 Natuzzi sectional sofa. The multimedia industry that has deadlines yesterday and labor prices in the stratosphere can afford an eight core Mac Pro with 8 gigs of RAM and terabytes of RAID storage (and probably use every bit of it), no problem.
Not surprisingly, Apple Stores are strategically placed in the most affluent districts of major MSA's. Willow Bend in Plano is one of three Dallas area stores... Plano has a median household income of $100,000 and residents such as cyclist Lance Armstrong and gymnast Nastia Liukin. Tokyo's Ginza district has some of the most expensive real estate in the world... it was packed to the brim with Apple fanatics when Leopard premiered.
To compete with Microsoft is to aspire to be the Wal-Mart of the computer industry... success by volume, not imagination. Where the hell is the fun in that? Anyone can hit a bullseye eventually if they keep throwing darts at a wall to see what sticks. It takes real skill to hit the bullseye on one throw. That's brand power you can't ignore.
Another problem is this notion that Microsoft is Apple's main competitor. They aren't. Apple is a hardware company, and they are the third largest computer manufacturer by volume now... behind only Dell and HP. At their rate of growth, three times the industry average, they could very welll become the market leader in 5-10 years. That is a significant achievement for a company once on the brink of extinction.
Now, yes in Steve Jobs' eyes, Microsoft is the competition. But let's not get ahead of ourselves. To seep into the public conscience Apple needs a footing. They're doing this systematically in a way that never occurred to Microsoft. Gates' genius idea was to make people need his product. But you can't get people to like you if they need you... eventually they come to resent you. You get people to like you by making them WANT you. Apple peppers the market with devices that people want.... people latch on, get a taste of the Apple experience. This brings them in to the Apple store and lo and behold what do they see? Apple computers all shiny, new and ALL of them turned on and connected to the internet with tons of apps to try out and no one waiting to kick you out of the store for loitering on macrumors for five hours.
For Microsoft, the money is in the software... BECAUSE ITS ALL THEY'VE GOT. For Apple, the money is in the hardware.... The software they make simply so they, not someone else, control the quality of the user experience. And what a user experience it is!
It still comes down to making a cool product because there are plenty of proprietary solutions that end up sucking wind in the market.... Sony made several of them. Perhaps you remember a few?
Apple's footing against Microsoft is gained by playing in an arena Microsoft can't seem to grasp... Hardware. Once they become the dominant market player against Dell and HP, toppling Microsoft in the consumer space will be relatively easy... ridiculously easy if Apple maintains fiscal conservancy and sustainable growth (read: ZERO DEBT) and it will from there be a much simpler venture if Apple chooses at THAT time to get into the enterprise PC market full-scale. I still don't think they should, and that goes back to the piss poor margins on volume orders with large businesses who only care about getting the minimum equipment at the cheapest price. Let me tell you about how stingy my multimillion dollar company is that will recycle every drive-melting HP laptop they've got no matter how much it costs in the short term because in their imagination this is a better investment than a computer that lasts five to ten years. (and maybe there are tax advantages to quickly depreciating products that we haven't considered here...)
To summarize... Apple does not need to be all things to all people. And every company that tries to be all things to all people ends up being some things to all people half of the time.
Apple's formula for fiscal success is simply this: Be everything to some of the people all of the time.
i am (WAS) a windoz fanboy. the "only" thing abt vista i like is the windows mail..and thats because of its spam filter...
other than that, vista is really pathetic... i saw my colleagues laptop running a brand new sony tz series laptop. the boot time was apalling
i dont know how many people are going to be happy with vista...
trust me...im still using a vista machine now. and i have tried out tiger only for a day or so. that was enough to win me over. i cant wait to get a new MB
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Great News!
I've followed these boards for quite some time now, but am finally commenting on the article. This is great news for Apple and Apple users. I really think you'll see more and more people thinking and switching to the mac platform. People are excited about Apple, and that goes a long way when those same people start talking to their friends and showing off their MacBooks, iMacs, Leopard, iLife, iWork etc. I work in the educational field and deal with over 54 school districts at one point or another. And sure enough, I've convinced our Model Schools Team to purchase new mb and mbp. There really is no better solution. And the same trend is happening in schools. While it's slow, a slow conversion is better then none at all.
My question to those who are using Leopard, what are you highlighting when you show it to your friends and colleagues? I know that TM is getting a lot of attention, but I'm finding the smaller features to be quite useful and resourceful.
Congratulations to Apple on the early numbers. Happy Leopard days ahead! Cheers ~
I've followed these boards for quite some time now, but am finally commenting on the article. This is great news for Apple and Apple users. I really think you'll see more and more people thinking and switching to the mac platform. People are excited about Apple, and that goes a long way when those same people start talking to their friends and showing off their MacBooks, iMacs, Leopard, iLife, iWork etc. I work in the educational field and deal with over 54 school districts at one point or another. And sure enough, I've convinced our Model Schools Team to purchase new mb and mbp. There really is no better solution. And the same trend is happening in schools. While it's slow, a slow conversion is better then none at all.
My question to those who are using Leopard, what are you highlighting when you show it to your friends and colleagues? I know that TM is getting a lot of attention, but I'm finding the smaller features to be quite useful and resourceful.
Congratulations to Apple on the early numbers. Happy Leopard days ahead! Cheers ~
No, Steve Jobs said Apple views itself as a software company. However, Apple is actually a hardware company. That's where it makes its money. There's a fundamental difference between *being* and *viewing itself* as a software company. Apple looks to its software to create its hardware.
"People that love software want to build their own hardware.”
http://d5.allthingsd.com/20070531/d5-gates-jobs-transcript/
Glass is half full: OMG! Leopard is the best version of OS X yet! Everyone wants it! Its great!
Glass is half empty: Everyone want to get the heck off Tiger.
So are you guys full or empty?
Whatever zealot.
*sighs* I find it amazing how people can bitch about an OS and Id bet $10 most of you haven't used it for more then a month at most. Windows like any OS has a learning curve. The problem with most of you people is that you never tried to LEARN Windows and instead decided to crap all over it and call it sucky. I was the EXACT same way the first 4-6 months on OS X. I swear as god as my witness there were days I wanted to find Jobs and smash this damn laptop over his head in frustration. OS X CAN and does cause frustration, I've found Leopard to cause less of it though. Much less.
If you learn Windows, and not just learn where to find x or y feature in the Control Panel, it can easily be as good as OS X. But you need to know its quirks. You need to know where its faults are are and fill in the holes with the software equivalent of spackle. Windows can be a complete OS but you DO need a few third party apps to do it. You need to know how to tweak windows. That is what the IT pro is for. We know this crap backwards and forwards. Hell I use to support an office of Mac's running Panther. I was dropped into the place because we picked up a contract to do IT support and it included this one off office of about 30 Macs running Panther. Didn't have to go there often but I can tell you right now tha t there were quirks with OS X just as there are with any OS. I really wish the zealots would wrap this concept around their little egocentric brain. Windows doesn't suck any more then all OS's be it OS X, Windows, Linux, Amiga, Unix, BSD, DOS, OS/400, VAX all suck to a certain extent.
Have you tried to set up wireless internet on windoze machines? What about one with a new wireless card without a driver? Can you do it in 2 clicks? Good luck trying to do that with windoze.
Windoze's poor design and bad usability that require various "tweaking" and expensive, and often clueless "IT pro" is not something that the user should have to "learn" to understand or get used to.
Here are some examples:
- windoze require anti-virus and anti-spyware programs.
Installing those programs makes the machines 10% slower.
- Windoze machines slow down with installation of each
new program, even if the program is not being run.
That's due to problems with the windoze registry. With
a Mac, no matter how many apps you install, it will
not slow down the computer.
- Mac OS can run multiple apps, open multiple documents, photos, at the same time without slow downs
- Inconsistent behaviors of MS programs for even the most basic functions such as opening, saving, and closing a document.
- Running a mac = less time trying to figure out where
is the incompatible driver / hardware / software /
windoze bug, and actually more time doing things you
want to do.
- Windoze machines slow down over time inexplicably, as soon as a
few months after clean install.
The choice is clear. The windoze trolls r just shatting in their moma's basement because they know their days are numbered (before they get taken away to the insane asylums for saying windoze is better despite of all facts pointing otherwise).
oooooook
aha..ok 2 million....So?? like that is beneficial for us .....where is the new and improved macbook??? now thats real news.
aha..ok 2 million....So?? like that is beneficial for us
.....where is the new and improved macbook??? now thats real news. As far as upgrades and maintenance agreements: I don't think anyone would ask to discount them from MS totals but keep them for Apple. I think the issue is that big corporations probably have standing agreement to get system upgrades (which are counted), but in actual fact they are insisting that the upgrades are not carried out in the case of Vista. LOL.
Further, I get the feeling that MS counts all OEM copies sold to PC manufacturers like Dell. So, for sake of argument, maybe 2 Million OEMs are licensed to Dell for the opening timeframe, but in the time frame counted Dell actually only sells say 500K or so computers. Whereas, the hardware sales Apple is counting are actual hardware sales? Maybe that is not how MS OEMs work, but at the very least it sounds like MS is counting every PC that comes off the shelf sold after Vista comes out, while a large number are being used with XP or other.
The more Leopard owners, the more development there is using Leopard technologies...aha..ok 2 million....So?? like that is beneficial for us
Note to troll in his moma's basement: Exchange isn't necessary for business.
Better solution:
http://www.apple.com/business/tip/productivity/
...
I'm not thoroughly satisfied. Am I the only who notices that PPC versions of OSX were always MUCH more stable? Leopard is darn fast but that doesn't excuse why it crashes so often. I am not the only one who has experienced crashes with iMovie and iChat. Thankfully I had APE and still upgraded successfully but I don't like the direction Apple is going. Yes Leopard is very nice but I'm not going to bow down that everything Apple comes out with is perfect or genius. It seems as if Apple is going after Windows customers. Compress instead of archive? People are forgetting the counterculture that Apple represents and came from. They are becoming exactly the company they set out not to be.
So maybe a lot of it is superficial changes. Even still, where is the CULTURE of Apple going?
I'm not thoroughly satisfied. Am I the only who notices that PPC versions of OSX were always MUCH more stable? Leopard is darn fast but that doesn't excuse why it crashes so often. I am not the only one who has experienced crashes with iMovie and iChat. Thankfully I had APE and still upgraded successfully but I don't like the direction Apple is going. Yes Leopard is very nice but I'm not going to bow down that everything Apple comes out with is perfect or genius. It seems as if Apple is going after Windows customers. Compress instead of archive? People are forgetting the counterculture that Apple represents and came from. They are becoming exactly the company they set out not to be.
So maybe a lot of it is superficial changes. Even still, where is the CULTURE of Apple going?
Not saying I disagree with you, but when people use old, tired, unfunny and what-they-mistake-to-be-clever spelling variations such as "windoze" repeatedly it usually ends up being to the detriment of the point which they are trying to make. It's a matter of perception and one to be aware of. Just some friendly advice for your consideration, that's all.
yeah.
yeah you've got a point....Im just sooo eager to get my first Mac. I have a YEAR waiting to get it. First i was expecting to get it last spring when leopard was supposed to come out on sale...then it was postponed thanks to the all mighty iphone.And now that is finally out they are talking about an upgrade coming on the macbook. I mean i think this is why not masses of people switch to mac, Apple is always making their products outdated without notice. Like my friend she got a macbook back in june...and now she cant upgrade to leopard for free because you are required to have bought your computer after Oct 1. I mean why didnt apple said so before?? like microsoft did? I love apple products, and the mac is wonderful, but sometimes their marketing and product management treats its customers very unfairly. I just hope we get a macbook update soon so i can finally get rid of windows.....else i'll have to wait until the San fran macworld next year..
yeah you've got a point....Im just sooo eager to get my first Mac. I have a YEAR waiting to get it. First i was expecting to get it last spring when leopard was supposed to come out on sale...then it was postponed thanks to the all mighty iphone.And now that is finally out they are talking about an upgrade coming on the macbook. I mean i think this is why not masses of people switch to mac, Apple is always making their products outdated without notice. Like my friend she got a macbook back in june...and now she cant upgrade to leopard for free because you are required to have bought your computer after Oct 1. I mean why didnt apple said so before?? like microsoft did? I love apple products, and the mac is wonderful, but sometimes their marketing and product management treats its customers very unfairly. I just hope we get a macbook update soon so i can finally get rid of windows.....else i'll have to wait until the San fran macworld next year..