Apple has announced it has sold more than 2 million copies of Mac OS X Leopard since its release on last Friday. It also notch up a new record and it seems Apple managed to sell nearly 700,000 copies of Leopard per day. I wonder it is due to the improved performance of system-level that based on Mach kernel and the switch to Intel processors which greatly improved the performance of Mac’s visualization solutions have resulted in Macs being widely chosen in the consumer/developer market.

After months of anticipation, Apple finally launches its newest version of Mac, i.e. Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard. It is the fifth updates (Cheetah & Puma, 2001; Jaguar, 2002; Panther, 2003; Tiger, 2005) to Mac OS X since the first version Cheetah launched in year 2001. Watching the Leopard Guided Tour will know that this new OS X contains more than 300 new features, including a new back-up system that called Time Machine. Though many users tried it and gave positive reviews, many of these new features can be viewed as incremental innovation, but it seems Apple has made this version of Mac Leopard more powerful, stable, and user-friendly. The Leopard has a new Finder, one can see her files in this new Finder and browse with Cover Flow, works much the same as she flip the album covers in her iTunes. The Finder also offers a Quick Look feature, help an user does one thing better, display the content before she launch the application. New features such as Spaces, a virtual desktop feature which main function is to group related applications in their own areas and Stacks, helps an user gathers related materials in an easy manner have been added. Nevertheless, I think the main selling point for this Leopard is the availability of Time Machine, which enables an user to restore her machine to a previous state.

My sense is that with the newest version of Mac OS X, Macintosh is becoming a more-manageable environment than in the past. For Windows users, if Windows Vista has disappointed them, then the above features found in Leopard might be served as a strong reason why they need to make a switch. In this case, Apple might be the beneficiary. However, I don’t see the existing Mac lovers will retain their fondness for the Mac Tiger when they see the enhancement and improvement of Apple done on this newest version of Mac, it’s only “when” they will make the upgrade. If you’re using the Mac old machine, Apple said the majority of Macs sold in the past four years will able to run Leopard, but some configuration need to be done on some Mac old machines.

Leopard is priced at $129 for a single user license, however for the family pack, in other word five users is priced at $199.

Recently Apple iPhone has generated massive buzz as their users are unsure whether or not to upgrade their iPhones to firmware version 1.1.1. If upgrade, they worried that their iPhones will not work with the older softwares or third-party applications. Enthusiasm over the iPhone has drove an application provider iPhoneSimFree become the first to roll out the iPhone 1.1.1 unlocker and users can now get their iPhones upgraded, working with the WiFi iTunes stores as well as SIM unlock their iPhones. Moreover, their solution enables their users to fix the bricked iPhones and bring their iPhones’ systems back to the older stable version, i.e. 1.0.2.

However, users need to register their IMEIs with iPhoneSimFree server through one of the resellers that are available throughout the regions, and the pricing I read on the web is $100 per license.

Last week was the iPhone week, since the iPhone launched on June 29, most iPhone stores in California and New York are run out of stock. According to an article, the shoppers snatched up about 525,000 of the devices at Apple and AT&T stores from last Friday’s launch through Sunday and most of the AT&T 1,800 stores ran out of stock by Saturday. Though a small percentage of customers experienced problems in activating the iPhones, I believed Apple will not allowed these problems to go unnoticed.

I know it’s a bit harsh to say sometimes I’m so confuse of the market research report. Few hours ago, I read a brief introduction of a white paper that stated “only 3% of the consumers have a strong interest in purchasing the iPhone at its $499.99 price point and two-year contract.” This is a new white paper just released from a market research and consulting firm. A moment later, I came across another survey done by HitWise pertaining to the iPhone topic. However, they argued that the volume of US searches for the term “iphone” increased 583 percent in the past four weeks (from the week ending May 26, 2007 to the week ending June 23), as shown in the below picture. Moreover, the keyword “iphone” was ranked as place 131 the most searched for term sending traffic to all US websites in the same research period as mentioned above. Based on the increased web searches on the “iphone” keyword, I trying to convince myself that the surfers are looking for the reasons to buy iPhone. If not, why waste time in doing the web search.

There is a huge differences between these two market research reports. For one is primary data, time-consuming and expensive availability, and the other one is secondary data, web traffic report, timely and inexpensive availability. In my first view, these two firms done the some sort of same research topic, research process may be the same, i.e. collation of data, gaining insights into the potential customers from the questionnaires or the web traffics, and most likely, developing the understanding of likely future behavior. The major difference is HitWise did not mentioned or released what will be the likely buying behaviors of the surfers.

For certain type of reports, we only have two alternative choices: believe it, use it, or “LOSE IT, FORGET ABOUT IT!”

Source: available at http://www.prweb.com/releases/hitwise/iphone/prweb536206.htm, accessed 27 June 2007

With less than 10 days to go before iPhone will be available on sell in the market, most users or developers are now questioning on whether any third-party application can be run or work on iPhone. Though Apple’s answer is yes, and Apple is always Apple, the most secretive company that we know, and would not allowed the developers to know much details about what being built inside the “cool, sweet” iPhone, or its framework, and indeed I’m not so surprise when Apple did not provide the software development kit (SDK) for the developers. It sounds like Apple believed in the support of full Javascript and AJAX functionality is more than enough to build a decent web application, but it’s isn’t.

I do not know the project parameters of Apple on this tiny iPhone, and also it’s looks like a huge project towards iPhone from Apple, but apparently, I don’t think iPhone version of Safari will allow the hot product of Microsoft, i.e. Silverlight plug-in to install on it, not to mention some crazy games developed from using Java, i.e. Java ME.

Update: Just came across the so-called “iPhone Application List,” a nice blog.

From recent buzz on the web, few are arguing on the speed of Apple’s Safari 3, Apple’s newest browser that just released to the market. Whether or not, it is faster or the slower than Internet Explorer, Firefox or Opera browser, as demonstrated in two different charts, it’s a debatable question. In the meantime, I just came across a forum, an user stated that by using a Javascript speed test, it showed Safari 3 indeed faster than the other browsers on the web, i.e. average time is 123, Aha!

Source: available at http://www.apple.com/safari/, accessed June 14 2007

Source: available at http://blog.wired.com/monkeybites/2007/06/wired_news_benc.html, accessed June 14 2007

Albeit that this feature is their strongest selling point, and of course, its biggest appeal, and some Mac users thought Safari browser is terrific, but I don’t think Apple can build an empire for Safari browser by simply relied on this “faster speed” feature. Was faster speed the answer for all the browsers, I wondered?

Apple has released its Safari 3 for Mac and Windows platforms, a tactical move for them to sow the seeds of the browser war in the future. Coined as twice as fast as IE 7 and up to 1.6 times faster than Firefox 2, according to Apple’s press release. Currently, Safari 3 offered in three different versions, i.e. Safari plus QuickTime for Windows XP and Vista, or a solely Safari executable file and the Safari for Mac OS X version 10.4.9 or later, as listed in Apple’s Safari download page. But I’m not so sure whether this Safari 3 for Windows platform will be regards as a product that clamored by the Windows users?

However, the most interesting part is that Apple have to pacify some of the critics especially this newly release product may have easily been hit by bugs. Though Apple not officially comment on this issue, hot on the wheel of this potential problem come another one, Safari 3 does not support Chinese character in a proper manner. According to a Chinese blog (in Mandarin), in order to use Safari 3 to view the Chinese character, two (2) main prerequisites must be fulfilled: An user’s system must have pre-installed Microsoft JhengHei, one of the popular East Asian User Interface fonts; An user must also customize her browser’s character encoding to this Microsoft JhengHei as well.

I predict that there’s more to develop if Apple really want to earn a chunk of the market share among the Windows users.