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Early Snow Leopard Sales More Than Double Those of Leopard
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That's the last thing anyone in their right mind would want. Apple succeeds spectacularly with Macs and OS X precisely because it's a closed, controlled ecosystem. Anything else (or anything less), and OS X becomes a Windows clone. And who the hell would want that?? The whole reason behind Apple's business model when it comes to Macs (and their resulting success) is that OS X is tied to Apple's hardware. This is the reason customer satisfaction rates are so high, year after year. This is the reason the also-rans of the industry aspire to render their products more "Mac-like" in every way possible.
This "freely use computing hardware the way they want" notion lives and dies in small corners of the internet, and in the even smaller corners in which Apple fan sites live, fuelled mainly by the geek/tech-enthusiast minority that (wrongly) thinks it knows whats best for everyone else. In fact, Apple seems to know best. Period. Hackintoshes and mucking around with the OS and wailing about "freeing" it is alright for that small segment of Apple's user base (a segment which in the grand scheme of things is inconsequential anyway), but it would be a monumental disservice to the average user.
Apple succeeds because of these specific differentiations. It's a coveted business model that others only wish they could emulate successfully. We're at the point now, where if the average user has $1000+ to spend (and apparently, plenty of them do!) a Mac will be near or at the very top of their list. That's quite an accomplishment. It's the reason Ballmer ends up looking stupid, flustered, and tongue-tied at press conferences, especially when he's in a room-full of Macs.
And by the way, the very last thing Apple's numbers, record Mac sales, and dominance of consumer mindshare and opinion would suggest is for Apple to free its OS. There's simply no demand for that and no reason to do so.
HUH! Hogwash!. Most of the hackintoshers are already breaking EULA's and are proud of it and have the audacity to have an excuse for doing it as if the excuse justifies it so if you think for one minute they are even willing to pay $30 when they can just torrent it you are giving them too much credit.
Not all of us are like that. I have 10.4 (albeit a PPC copy) through 10.6 retail discs in my closet. Not running 10.6 fulltime, but I've paid for my copy and in a few months time will use it.
well, I can proudly say that as an early adopter, I'm part of this statistic ... and as for what many of you are saying about price being a factor, I definitely agree, I wouldn't have been nearly as eager to buy my copy if Snow Leopard had been much more than $29, particularly since it's pretty much identical to Leopard feature-wise, but I can safely say that the drastic performance increase (at least for my MacBook) has made this the best $29 I've ever spent on a computer-related purchase.
... and as for what many of you are saying about price being a factor, I definitely agree, I wouldn't have been nearly as eager to buy my copy if Snow Leopard had been much more than $29, particularly since it's pretty much identical to Leopard feature-wise, but I can safely say that the drastic performance increase (at least for my MacBook) has made this the best $29 I've ever spent on a computer-related purchase.And here we go again... Excuses, excuses and more excuses from *LTD*, Apple-expert en grande. And on top of that you've failed to see what my comment was all about.
You're not a poster-bot, are you? Catching the sentence but missing the point of it?
Unfortunately this logic is not passed on to their computers. Make things cheaper and more people will buy them, make them overpriced and damn near nobody will buy them.
Not for developers. We can not move over as a lot of our transcode software is build in C and now will not compile due to 64 bit issues.
Comparing sales figures of Snow Leopard, Leopard and Tiger is a joke anyway. There are millions more Mac users now than their were in 2005. While it makes a great PR headline, it's always going to be more with each Mac OS X release.
The only true way to compare OS releases would be by OS adoption percentages. What percentage of the Mac user base at the time upgraded to Tiger within the first two weeks? Leopard, etc.
That would give you a better sense of the successfulness of Snow Leopard. This is likely what Apple looks at internally.
Just take a look at the exponential growth in Mac shipments since 2006.
http://switchtoamac.com/site/mac-sh...ears-first-yearoveryear-drop-in-55-years.html
The only true way to compare OS releases would be by OS adoption percentages. What percentage of the Mac user base at the time upgraded to Tiger within the first two weeks? Leopard, etc.
That would give you a better sense of the successfulness of Snow Leopard. This is likely what Apple looks at internally.
Just take a look at the exponential growth in Mac shipments since 2006.
http://switchtoamac.com/site/mac-sh...ears-first-yearoveryear-drop-in-55-years.html
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Normally I get in a new OS the first day (not on my main computer for work but try it out on my laptop first and then update the rest) With snow leopard I am still waiting, since there aren't a ton of great new features I am just waiting for the dust to settle and make sure there are no major problems with my apps before upgrading, might be sometime in the next few weeks though
I'm in my right mind, and I want it - I really couldn't care less about apples business strategy. I also couldn't care less about what an average computer user wants or needs (I think most people would be better off with an oss distro btw), I'm in it for myself and I'm the sort of guy that reads and posts on tech forums... I'm part of the statistic, I bought a copy of snow leopard, and I don't own any apple branded computers any more - go figure?
It may surprise you to know that osx 10.5/6 runs pretty much (or completely) out of the box (once booted) on many intel systems.
I'm sure for many obvious reasons, all financially benefiting apple (you realise they're just a big greedy corp like everyone else right?), that it won't happen - what they're doing at the moment is working fine.
Customer satisfaction rates? I wish I could voice my opinion in one of these one day. Anyway, rather arrogantly I'd like to say that pretty much every user I know, knows nothing.
And here we go again... Excuses, excuses and more excuses from *LTD*, Apple-expert en grande. And on top of that you've failed to see what my comment was all about.
You're not a poster-bot, are you? Catching the sentence but missing the point of it?
Had I wanted to deal with the rest of your post, I would have quoted the rest.
And you can call Apple's record successes - in a recession, excuses.
I call it facts.
I agree not only that people are scrambling to fix their recently purchased crappy Macbook (Less than) Pro computers. Since apple will not fix the problems or even recognize them people are hoping apple silently put the fixes int the Magical, almighty, holy than tho Snow Leopard.
Sorry, just my 2 pennies!
of course they sold more. look at how much cheaper it is. i hope they sell more than 5 million copies in that timeframe though
This isn't Windows where you have a bazillion clone options. You still need to by the hardware to run it so a lot of the old base and new users are coming aboard to the latest hardware.
Well they would sell one more if they could keep my local Apple Store in stock. Everytime I go there they are out of copies. How long has it been out now? It's a burned DVD, not an iPhone - last time I checked paper and DVDs were in great supply....
Except people are.
Record Mac sales (during a recession, no less) don't happen by accident. The price drop a few months ago wasn't all that substantial. And the envrionment was even more volatile with those Laptop Losers ads. Except Apple actually sold more Macs.
91% share in the $1000+ notebook (physical store purchases) segment means no one is buying them? Apple rules the Premium end. And Macs are priced accordingly. Not every income bracket is going to participate, naturally.
Macs have never sold better. Apple's growth has outpaced the rest in the industry in this area several years running.
Oh, and here's more good news to add to the ever-growing pile:
http://www.macdailynews.com/index.p...hone_ipods_top_pc_mags_annual_reader_satisfa/
Of course, the low cost for the upgrade did help the sales numbers. However, there's more Mac users than before. Also, there were a lot of people still using Tiger that hadn't upgraded to Leopard. So, a lot of those users probably felt the need to upgrade to Snow Leopard since they would be two operating systems behind... adding this factor with a low price cost gives this sale boost.
Hardly BS.
Only reason I bought Snow Leopard - $30.
Only reason I bought a Windows 7 upgrade - $50 special at Amazon.
Reason I'm still using Tiger on my primary Mac - $130
They've had the balls once, and when Amelio's got cut off during the clone years they decided to keep Steve's intact.
I think the whole point is that Leopard and Snow Leopard aren't available in the Windows world.
Lowered price elsewhere
$24.99 with free shipping from Amazon.com, $29 plus shipping from Apple if you don't spend at least $50 now. We won't even mention sales tax as that is an item that is supposed to be paid by most people, but probably isn't.
$24.99 with free shipping from Amazon.com, $29 plus shipping from Apple if you don't spend at least $50 now. We won't even mention sales tax as that is an item that is supposed to be paid by most people, but probably isn't.
I'm one of those that preordered it at Amazon for $29 & only had to pay $24.99 when it shipped. I have it installed on a separate partition on a backup drive on my Intel Mac Pro. I try to run it everyday to see if there are any problems or there are anything that seems to make it better. So far the results are not very consistent. I've had a couple of crashes but one of those programs also had a little problem with 10.5.8. I've had some noticeable slowdowns, but not any noticeable speedups.
So the result is I'll keep testing until tax becomes a 120-140 hour a week work schedule. At the current time I expect to use 10.5.8 as my running system on all of my Macs. 10.6 may not be running well enough to trust my business to how well it actually runs. It will not be the version number that Apple is shipping then, but how it runs with my particular group of software programs.