Interestingly enough, its been dubbed the best OS release of Apple’s entire computing history.

Leopard, OSX 10.5 was released last month.  Apples previous version of OSX, version 10.4, code named Tiger, was released in May of 2005.  Apple has sold 21% more copies of Leopard than Tiger.  At just $129 a copy ($199 for a Family Pack you can install on up to 5 computers under a single roof…the location is part of the Family license pack, btw…), its not a huge dollar-to-dollar increase, 32.8%; but that’s still rather significant. The increase can be partially attributed to the OS hitting the shelves in November, just in time for Black Friday and Cyber Monday. 

However, a research firm thinks that the real success to the whole rollout is not marketing per se. It can actually be found in Apple’s rollouts and product development strategies.  They seem to have just gotten the formula for rolling out new versions of their flagship OS right.  High praise for a software company. As a Software Quality professional with just over 17 year of QA experience, I have seen many different systems and success rates.  Apple does indeed have something going on here.  Go, baby go! 

Key features of Leopard include Apple’s new file backup applet called Time Machine. Locating a file or a specific version of a file is really, no longer a problem under Leopard.  Users can simply click on a Time Machine button to bring up a series of windows stretching over the horizon, with a picture of a black hole off in the distance. Each window represents a day or another fixed period of time.  To find the desired file, the user "flies" back in time toward the black hole, with a time line on the right side of the screen marking progress as the days sweep underneath. Time Machine saves the changes from one version of the file to a newer version. Once the last saved version of the file is located, it can be restored to the main Finder window with a click of the mouse. Other OS improvements include enhancements to Apple Mail, instant messaging, file previews, and quick access to other computers on your home or office network.

As a reminder, Mitchell and I are still working on our combined review of Apple’s Leopard. Look for it before the end of the year.  It should be a real cool write up, so stay tuned!!