Leopard is top cat in Mac OS sales

Cupertino (CA) - Apple’s first month sales for Mac OS X 10.5 "Leopard" have exceed all previous Mac OS sales in terms of first month’s volume. According to the report, released by NPD Group, and reported on at Apple Developer Connection, the first month’s sales on retail store shelves represents a 20.5% increase over Tiger sales, a 30% increase over the 2003 Panther release, and a 100% increase over 2002’s Jaguar.

In terms of raw revenue, Leopard represented a 32.8% increase over Tiger. Family Pack sales were also up, accounting for 33% of Leopard sales, compared to only 20.4% of Tiger sales.

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According to NPD Group, Apple’s Leopard launch also coincided quite nicely with the peak of the holiday buying season, undoubtedly contributing to Apple’s largest first month success for an OS.

TG Daily took a look previously at some of the Leopard features. Some of the biggest new features were undoubtedly the new Dock, which slants like the leaning tower of Pisa. And also a historical, or chronological view of documents at various stages of development over time. A Leopard user can go back and look at what their term paper, or Garage Band file, or whatever else, looked like 10 days ago, for example, without having to have manually saved a copy at that point and time. A slick feature, and one that would undoubtedly be very helpful for certain types of uses.

Apple users continue to be impressed with Apple’s delivered upon mantra of "it just works". Many critics are unhappy with the lack of hardware upgrades, previously (before switching to Intel processors), the lack of software support, and the high initial cost of ownership. Though, several websites have demonstrated that by the time you factor in all of the long-term costs associated with using Windows, such as anti-virus subscriptions, buying software programs like Microsoft Office, etc., that the Macs actually cost less when you consider what they come with. I think the jury might still be out on that hotly debated topic, however.