01/22/2008, 7:00pm, EST
Tuesday, January 22nd
Leopard launch dwarfs Tiger by $70 million
Apple's Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard operating system, which launched on October 26th of last year, earned the company $170 million during its first quarter of availability. Those earnings compare to Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger's launch in late April of 2005, which earned the company roughly $100 million during its first quarter on the market. "We're extremely pleased with the very successful launch of Leopard on October 26th, and the response from both customers and reviewers have been terrific," said Apple CFO Peter Oppenheimer.
Apple is expecting much lower earnings during its next quarter as a result of an expected decline in Leopard sales. Historically many computer owners upgrade to a newly released operating system shortly after launch, after which sales tend to drop sharply.
Several factors contribute to operating system sales, however, such as late adopters who do not entirely trust the initial release of a new operating system. Those users tend to hold out until a more battle-hardened version of the OS is available, making their purchases much later than the early adopters who make up the initial wave of sales.
"We believe that 19 percent of the Mac OS X installed base is already using Leopard," Oppenheimer said.
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Pete has got to be kidding. I use Leopard every day, and like a lot of things about it, but there's no denying that this was the buggiest Mac OS release ever.
Tech reviewers and customers posting on Internet message board have both been very vocal about Leopard's shortcomings. Granted, Apple still made a ton of money on it, but I can hardly qualify Leopard as a roaring success.
But also remember that most tech reviewers don't spend time using the software full-time for long periods. It usually is "OK, got this, let me install it, play with it for a few days, then move on to the next thing". So they review on the obvious, the superficial, the feature set, but rarely get to the points where the problems arise. And, if you're lucky, you'll get reviewers who don't use the previous version of the software, either, so they won't compare the two and list new shortcomings.
But those are the reviewers the companies like, because they're more likely to rave their reviews and gloss over (or just not realize) some problems.
That's why I prefer my reviews from a site like Ars-Technica, which would have a 12 page review of something like Leopard, detailing everything from the glitz to the underpinnings and stuff in between.
Sure beats using Vista, though.
I can see the advertising now: "You hated the dock in 10.0! You still hated it in 10.4! In 10.5, Apple performed what no one thought was possible, making the dock even less useful then ever! But you haven't seen anything yet! Coming with 10.6. The worst dock yet!"