Apple: 2 million copies of Leopard sold

Leopard is on track to be Apple's most successful OS ever. According to Apple, Leopard sold two million copies in its first weekend, "far outpacing" Tiger -- Apple's previous best selling OS. Anyone have Vista's first 2.5 days sales numbers available? Come on, it's always fun to compare.

[Magnulus @ Oct 30th 2007 9:08AM]

It's not really that much of a surprise, is it? I mean, Their market share is up, so sales of the OS will be up. Of course, it helps that the users don't have to buy a whole new computer just to make it run.

[tcc3 @ Oct 30th 2007 10:15AM]

Unless you have a G3.

[Jeff Lewis @ Oct 30th 2007 10:21AM]

Actually - Leopard doesn't run on any of my Macs (although ironically, with the Brazil patch, I can kinda make it run on my PCs...).

Vista, on the other hand, runs on all my PCs including two four-year old Shuttles.

[Paul Sorice @ Oct 30th 2007 11:07AM]

If your running a G3 why bother? Get a Mac Mini at that point.

[Gene @ Oct 30th 2007 11:11AM]

Jeff,

Do you have any PCs that are six years or older that you've installed Vista on? How are they holding up?

[technocurmudgeon @ Oct 30th 2007 7:44PM]

Yes, and I am sure that if Apple wanted, they could make a feature free version of Leopard that could run on ancient equipment, but seriously, what is the point? That is what Jaguar, or Tiger is for. Microsoft's point in making it possible for the OS to run on old PCs is that they can say "Hey, look, it runs on anything!" and impress people like you, but if the features are the same as the previous operating system, and it takes your 386 30 minutes to boot up & is still incapable of being a viable, functioning solution to your work / play it is in fact, outside of geek cred - pointless. The whole allure of Vista was the bells & whistles, the eye candy. It's like thinking your getting a Mercedes Benz, and you end up with Chrysler (same company now)
The truth is, you need a pretty up to date system to run Vista full on.
The next version of what ever MS decides to call their OS will be rife with ideas completely lifted from Leopard, yet not implemented as well. This makes MS fans upset, but it is the 100% truth since Windows 3.1. Those of you who consistently want to point to market share of the OSes, look deeper into it. Then, look at the market share trends over the last 5 years, and look at the stock prices of all your favorite computer & software companies and compare it to Apple. You are making comments here that expose you as someone who is blindly, and foolishly defending a company they obviously do not know anything about, and belittling another company which they also know nothing about.
It is like a parade of stubborn ignorance.

[John @ Oct 30th 2007 12:36PM]

I don't know how you thought we'd respond to what you obviously thought was beautiful prose, but frankly, the point of windows running on just about anything is that unlike Mac OS, you aren't technically locked into their own hardware (osx86, blah blah blah), and so Microsoft has nothing to gain by requiring you to upgrade your computer, but could easily lose a sale if it did.

FYI, the next version of windows has been in development for some time now, because it's effectively dumping the legacy code that makes windows work with everything and on everything. So, you can go spew your grade school level propaganda elsewhere.

[Jeremiah Hoffman @ Oct 30th 2007 1:33PM]

actually mercedes and chrysler are not the same company now. they were from 1998 to mid 2007 then mercedes put chrysler/dodge/jeep on the open market, cerberus investment group bought them and finallized the purchase a few months ago.

and oh yeah i agree with john (at least mostly) microsoft "7" is supposed to be completly new but by the time it comes out i think they'll make it run on some older stuff, just maybe not as old as they've previously done. (like maybe computers from 2 years before the release of the os will be able to run it but not much past that 2 year mark, but really who knows, and why do we care so much?

[Red @ Oct 31st 2007 7:38PM]

I just want to point out one thing. Apple has 870 million shares outstanding, Microsoft over 9 Billion, or roughly 10 times the number of shares in the wild. When Apple stock approaches $350 a share (what Microsoft would be after a reverse 10 to 1 split to bring parity) Microsoft will have something to worry about. Until then just remember Microsoft is primarily a software company that has to sell to the lowest common demonitator, and Apple is a hardware company that markets a unix OS to sell its hardware. If you want to compare companies compare Apple to Dell, at least they are in the same core business.

[purezerg @ Oct 31st 2007 2:01PM]

it's amazing how good leopard is. it has so far been 100% capable of crashing every nikon software, lightroom, capture1 and even more other applications.

it's amazing how leopard hates 3rd party applications like iphone.

[heshmati4 @ Oct 30th 2007 9:09AM]

great job apple!!! prob not as fast as vista but it took tiger 6 weeks!!!

[jeff @ Oct 30th 2007 11:26AM]

Obviously this thread has descended into the predictable Vista/Microsoft bash-o-thon, but lets look at this rationally.

2 Million in the first weekend is nothing out of the ordinary with an Apple product. Apple has always had 2 million fans that want to be part of the first wave of Apple users to get the new toy. Sales will start to trail off as with most of Apple's products. so next weekend there wont be 2 million sold, and I'm sure there wont be an article with huge graphic telling us that.

And I doubt that Microsoft, which has sold far more copies of Vista than Apple has total users, is going to lose sleep. And even those "hordes" of people that supposedly bought Vista and then bought XP because they hated it soooooooo much (which at this point is just an urban legend), just would have given MS a double shot of cash. So all those people acting like these 2 million sold units came all came from Windows users are misplacing their glee as usual.

I mean how many more stories of MS having great financial quarters, and increased Vista sales, is it going to take for some of you to get on the reality train and take a vacation out of the RDF?

[azayzel @ Oct 30th 2007 11:41AM]

Come on Engadget, you're so far down on Apple's teat that you're almost sucking there...

Anyway, it's good to see another OS besides M$'s pulling down some shares, but the world knows that for every license Apple sells, Microsoft sells 100. Wake up, not that many people really use Macs, regardless of the number of ads Apple buys to make it appear so. I'm sick of seeing all the "apparently hip" people in movies using Macs to do things they'd never be used for. I work in industry and know that 90% of all businesses and homes use Windows products while only a fraction use Macs. Sure, they might look cool but their dumbed-down-to-the-hilt approach makes intelligent people wonder if the system was designed for their 3-year old.

How about some unbiased opinions on products and not some stupid paid announcements?

[adium @ Oct 30th 2007 12:21PM]

jeff:

how are the ipod and iphone "trailing off"?

[sam @ Oct 30th 2007 12:29PM]

"How about some unbiased opinions on products and not some stupid paid announcements?"

Ya, how bout it?

When is the last time you used a Mac? You're clearly insanely biased.

If you think UNIX is for three year olds, then I'd like to know what 3 year olds you've been hanging out with.

Ah, it's cool. Keep your opinions of computer platforms that you formed 15 years ago. I mean, things in computers don't really change much over the years. If Macs sucked in 1992, the must suck now.

Good work.

On being an idiot.

[Jack Storm @ Oct 30th 2007 12:36PM]

lol if it was was Microsoft it woulda read:
"Microsoft: Only 2 million copies of Vista sold"

[CraigJ @ Oct 30th 2007 12:44PM]

@Jeff. I follow both Microsoft and Apple stocks quite closely. Microsoft is up 31% since Jan '05, which isn't bad until you consider that from 2000 to today they are down 40%. They have had one good quarter in the last 3 years. Apple, OTH, is up 480% since Jan '05, and up 622% since 2000. Nobody could touch Microsoft from the late 80s through 2000, but they just haven't performed well since then, except for the last quarter.

So to answer your question: More than one.

[something @ Oct 30th 2007 1:04PM]

To be fair, it's kinda hard to go up from the top and easy from the bottom

[jholdaway @ Oct 30th 2007 2:11PM]

Yes, it does make Apple look impressive when you put it in context of amazing growth and customer approval.. Even the 2 million over the weekend may look better than 20 million if you do hours of math.. (or a few seconds.. 2/5% > 20/90%)...

But thats no fun!

Apple Sucks, Microsoft Rules!!!

[Froggy @ Oct 30th 2007 2:26PM]

does the 2 million copies include those sold to retail shops? which are not yet sold per say, just sitting on a shelf? cos this is the way apple usually counts

[jholdaway @ Oct 30th 2007 2:38PM]

Um, thats the only way ANY manufacturer releases numbers..

It's not like fry's or compusa waits until it's at your house before they pay Apple.

(and the only way they would do that with an apple retail store is if it is run independent as a separate subsidiary.. I'm not aware if it is or not.)

[Dominosonfire @ Oct 31st 2007 4:45AM]

@ jeff
people replacing vista with xp an urban legend? what hole do you live in. I myself have bought a machine and "downgraded" my licence to XP. as have all the new machines in my company. and our satellite companies. and my friends. etc, etc.

and also @ azayzel,

i work in both graphic and visual effect design - and i have to say i see a far greater apple user base in the field i work in than a windows one.

Just cause you don't use them doesn't mean they're not used

[azayzel @ Nov 1st 2007 3:12PM]

@Sam

Touch a nerve Sam? I'm just tired of all the praise Engadget keeps throwing to Apple like they're the only company shipping anything worthwhile, which they aren't. As to the remark about 3-year old kids, I work with them and know what they can can handle, not to mention while Mac OS is a Linux-type distro, it's actually BSD, which is a bit differnt than your average distros. You know, some commands are a bit differnt. Oh wait, we're talking about Macs... I think probably only 10% of the user-base evens knows how to drop down to a command shell, so I don't think a kid would have a problem clicking a few pretty icons.

and another thing, not insanely biased... I have a Mac, amongst all my other PC's, while it's cool for a change every now and then I don't like being locked to the meager scraps of software available for it without having to roll my own UB for the platform.

@Dominosonfire

You got me on the editing front, though I think this is simply a throwback to the days when you didn't have a decent version of PS running on a PC. That's all changed now, but I think the simplicity of the OS is what draws the average Mac user in.

[websyndicate @ Oct 30th 2007 9:13AM]

Developers! Developers! Developers!

[2shae @ Oct 30th 2007 9:14AM]

And thousands have downloaded it through torrents.

[Mike @ Oct 30th 2007 9:16AM]

Well, Vista sold 20 million licenses in its first month, I can't find first weekend. Also, the NoPE release of the cracked version of Vista surely hurt sales, I remember having so many seeds when I was downloading both the 32bit and 64 bit versions...i mean...I was downloading freeware. Yes, thats right...freeware. ::shifty eyes::

haha. Well, we shall see I guess. I wonder how many Apple computers are actually out there?

[manfesto @ Oct 30th 2007 9:39AM]

http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/07/03/02/mac_install_base_estimated_at_22_million_pre_leopard.html

As of March 07, about 22 million OS X machines. Last quarter they sold about 2 million (mostly laptops, of course, since they're now #3 behind Dell and HP).

So I'd guess around 25 million?

[paolo90 @ Oct 30th 2007 10:10AM]

Yeah, in case you don't know the implications of what you quoted:

Apple worked for so long to achieve a 22-million user base, and it only took a month for Vista to top that :P

[Jeff Lewis @ Oct 30th 2007 10:30AM]

@Paolo

And to make it worse - that's the same number that Apple quoted as their user base back in the mid-90s... so all they've done is get back to their old numbers - while the PC world has more than doubled.

Citing them by company number is highly misleading because the PC world isn't one company - it's a lot of companies and there isn't the brand loyalty you see with Apple's consumers. This has had the effect of flattening out the market share for PC companies, but since you can only get Macs from Apple, they're immune to that spreading effect.

To see what I mean, imagine that there's just 100 new computers built and sold each year and 10 companies. Apple is one and sells 10 computers/yr. To start, one of the companies sells 80 of the computers and the remaining seven companies sell the remaining 10.

Several years later, Apple is still selling 10, but the remaining 90 are evenly distributed across the other 9 companies, which puts Apple tied for first - even though they haven't increased their market share at all.

[zzebi @ Oct 30th 2007 10:44AM]

Actually, majority of Vista sales are coming from new PC purchases and not the boxed versions.
We can be sure that Apple was not able to sell 2 million Macs in 2 days so we can assume that the vast majority of the Leopard sales were boxed versions, thus upgrades.

Regarding Windows, absolute numbers are not known but boxed Vista sales were down about 60% from boxed XP sales. That's a good indication of how much people wanted to upgrade to Vista. In fact it indicates that people actually didn't want Vista but they had no choice but getting the OEM version when buying a new computer. To address the need for XP, OEM's had to start offering XP again as an alternative to Vista.
I think it's hardly a great success in terms of customer satisfaction. On the business point of view, obviously MS makes money on everything so they can be satisfied.

I don't think Apple will need to sell Tiger anymore....

[Dave @ Oct 30th 2007 11:10AM]

I was under the impression that Vista's first month sales included all the upgrade vouchers they had been giving away for the past couple months.

[kcar @ Oct 30th 2007 11:14AM]

Jeff Lewis and Paolo90: You two clowns need to entertain each other in a quiet corner. Apple in the early-mid '90s was a completely different company, run by a completely different group. It was bloated, uninspired and resting on its laurels.

Today, it executes and innovates in ways that MS can only dream about. If it excites you that Apple hasn't yet returned to its historical high in terms of market share, whack off over that. It sells far more computers than it did back in the '90s, and Mac OS X is miles ahead of Vista. I don't hear Mac users demanding a downgrade option for their machines. I DO hear that from Vista users.

If you don't like Apple, great. But try to accept the fact that Apple is growing faster than the rest of the PC industry, and that Windows is slowly turning into a quagmire.

[bewlaybrutha @ Oct 30th 2007 11:51AM]

Vista was like installing a new boat anchor on the Titanic, in 2007.

[jeff @ Oct 30th 2007 12:02PM]

"and that Windows is slowly turning into a quagmire."

It's selling more copies than Apple has users to sell OSX to. How is this a "quagmire". Do you even know what that word means?

Despite news of their recent financial results (which were buried by this site), people like you insist on using the same tired rhetoric to make it seem like Microsoft is just about to go out of business. They are stronger then they have been in years. More people use Windows than ever before.

These Vista downgrade stories are just pathetic propaganda used by Apple users to make it seem like people hate Vista. Again something that has to be disproven every few months by MS's quarterly statements.

[jholdaway @ Oct 30th 2007 2:37PM]

Yeah haven't you guys learned from the 2004 election? It's not about approval or customer satisfaction. Its about numbers.

If you sell lots of awesome products, have triple digit stock growth since the dotcom bust, have some of the highest satisfaction rates and make money on everything you sell doesn't matter if you only have millions of customers.

If your products are ok, and your customer satisfaction is satisfactory, and your stock growth is in the double digits, but you have a giant customer base of billion+ locked in, your gold.

I'm both an Apple and Microsoft fan.

Be happy "microsoft only" fans.. You have awesome products from microsoft. Vista is the best so please enjoy it, but realize that there might be something to Mac OS X.. There is a reason the tech savvy community has a much higher percent of Apple users than the general public.

[Ty @ Oct 30th 2007 5:12PM]

I wish people would keep in mind that there are plenty of PC users that are completely satisfied with Vista and would never go back to XP. The majority of Vista's issues were driver issues (like not having an 8800GTX driver on launch!) and are being resolved on a daily basis. Vista runs great on my machine. I would test Leopard for a comparison but for some reason I can't get the DVD to read in the gaming rig I built ;)

At any rate, I know Mac fanboys and PC fanboys love to argue with each other, but do we have to be so partisan all the time? It's getting to a point where I'd rather watch CSPAN than read the first comment on an Engadget Mac post. For a brief moment I'd like to shed light on the fact that Vista is designed to operate on, quite literally, millions of potential hardware configurations, whereas Leopard is designed to run on a few hundred. They are separate worlds and they are each good for different people, for different reasons. The very reason why Mac's are so stable is because they control the hardware OS X runs on.

In my world it is literally impossible for Leopard to be 'better' than Vista. I beta test PC games and I play World in Conflict regularly. I also do a variety of downloading that windows is generally better suited for than OS X. In order to enjoy the 'superiority' of Leopard, you're telling me I have to pay for inferior hardware (yes, in the desktop market my rig kicks the shit out of the Mac Pro) for more money, and I have to stop playing my video games. Or just be satisfied with World of Warcraft. Come again?

My sister, however, doesn't play video games. She could care less about them. She also doesn't care about building her own computer or having a choice of a video card that isn't two years old (GeForce 7600 GT, I'm looking at you), or any other particular hardware desires. She wants a computer that is pretty and easy to use, and just works. She owns a MacBook.

Different strokes for different folks. My computer does what I want it to do. It runs Vista. I'm pretty sure that makes it better [for me].

[kL @ Oct 30th 2007 7:47PM]

...and 22 million copies downgraded to XP next weekend!

[I couldn't resist my inner troll :)]

[kevjohn @ Oct 30th 2007 9:18AM]

So what, did everbody who owns an Apple buy 2 copies?

[Dale @ Oct 30th 2007 9:50AM]

No, you see, unlike Microsoft, Apple offer Family Packs - a copy of the OS that can be installed on upto five systems - for the price of one install of Vista. There is no need for anyone to buy multiple copies if they have multiple machines.

[HineyWipe @ Oct 30th 2007 9:59AM]

Um. Well. I did (oops). But it was for a good cause. Cause I was a fool!

BTW, some DJ i met is bragging he downloaded the full image file from bittorrent on Thursday so...Apple, the pirate's name is Rory and his email is tweekbass at ay oh 'ell dot com.

[Eric @ Oct 30th 2007 10:00AM]

Also apple charges for what is basicly a service pack, so It balances out.

[Eric @ Oct 30th 2007 10:00AM]

Also apple charges for what is basically a service pack, so It balances out.

[Paul Evans @ Oct 30th 2007 10:07AM]

Eric: I'd love to know what you're basing that assertion on, other than common-or-garden ignorance and/or lesser-spotted bitterness.

[rawhead @ Oct 30th 2007 10:08AM]

Yeah, Eric, keep repeating that. After a while, you'll actually start to believe it, and if you're lucky, you'll convince a few of your fellow trolls along the way. In the mean time, the world moves on.

[PDubNYC @ Oct 30th 2007 10:19AM]

Dale,
He was making a hilarious joke about the size of the Apple user base, and how, (HA HA HA, I can't seem to stop laughing) surely with only 1 million Apple users out there (HA HA HA) they must have each purchased 2 copies to get the number up to 2 million.

zing...

[bondsbw @ Oct 30th 2007 10:45AM]

Eric:

What makes something a service pack vs. a new version? Just because it looks totally different, as opposed to actually having new usable features?

I suggest you go to www.windowblinds.com, they can give you hundreds of new "versions" of Windows for just a few bucks. Many of them better than Vista.

[bondsbw @ Oct 30th 2007 10:48AM]

Hah, scratch that... try www.stardock.com... that's what I get for guessing a URL without actually trying it.

[Patrik @ Oct 30th 2007 9:18AM]

Hahahaha ARE you kidding me HESHFATTY?

AND I QUOTE Microsoft !

"We sold tens of thousands of copies (of Vista) this first weekend,"

LOL

[caleb @ Oct 30th 2007 11:42AM]

I knew this quote was too good to be true, I was going to ask you for your source, but I decided I would try to find it myself. I did, but unfortunately it was not a MS quote, but a Dell quote. Now, if Dell, one of MS's biggest resellers, sold "Tens of thousands", I'm sure Vista's totals from all resellers might have reached hundreds of thousands. This leads me to believe that those passionate about Apple and OS X far outnumber those that are passionate about Microsoft and Vista.

Source: http://news.zdnet.com/2100-3513_22-6154227.html

[Tony @ Oct 30th 2007 12:11PM]

I was gonna say [citation needed], but thanks for clearing that up. Why this idiot is getting ranked is beyond me.

This article is nothing but flame bait, minimal content.

Utter fail for Engadget.