Apple sells 2 million copies of Leopard in first week

Apple said Tuesday that it sold over two million copies of MacOS X Leopard since its release on Friday, far outpacing thefirst-weekend sales of Mac OS X Tiger, which was previously the mostsuccessful OS release in the company's history.

Sales included copies sold at Apple's retail stores, Apple AuthorizedResellers, the online Apple Store, under maintenance agreements andbundled with new Mac computers. In comparison, it took theCupertino-based Mac maker nearly six weeks to ship its 2 millionth copy of Mac OS X Tiger back in 2005.

"Early indications are that Leopard will be a huge hit with customers,"said Apple chief executive Steve Jobs. "Leopard's innovative featuresare getting great reviews and making more people than ever think aboutswitching to the Mac."

Leopard is the sixth major release of Mac OS X and is packed with morethan 300 new features. Among them is Time Machine, an effortless way toautomatically back up everything on a Mac; a redesigned Finder thatlets users quickly browse and share files between multiple Macs; QuickLook, a new way to instantly see files without opening an application;Spaces, an intuitive new feature used to create groups of applicationsand instantly switch between them; a brand new desktop with Stacks, anew way to easily access files from the Dock; and major enhancements toMail and iChat.

Mac OS X version 10.5 Leopard is available through the Apple Store, atApple's retail stores and through Apple Authorized Resellers for asuggested retail price of $129 for a single user license and $199 forthe five-user license Family Pack.

However, the best deals on Leopard continue to come by way of onlineretailer Amazon.com, which does not charge sales tax and is offering aninstant $20 off Leopard single license and $10 off the family pack, bringing the costs down to $109, and $189, respectively. Amazon is also offering deals on Leopard Server.

Leopard requires a minimum of 512MB of RAM and is designed to run onany Macintosh computer with an Intel, PowerPC G5 or G4 (867 MHz orfaster) processor.