Microsoft’s worst nightmare is coming to pass. Apple’s new operating system, OSX 10.5 “Leopard” is out, and it’s exceeding expectations almost everywhere.
Apple are reporting first weekend sales of over 2 million copies of the new operating system. Almost unbelievably to a wisened old cynic such as myself, the reviews and accounts of those upgrading are overwhelmingly positive.
What does all this mean for normal users? It means that the operating system on the Mac costs less than half the price of Microsoft Windows, is liked by the massive majority of it’s users, and is compatible to a fantastic degree with previous versions. It is prettier, faster and massively easier to use than Vista, and runs on far less powerful hardware.
Competition is a wonderful thing, and Vista now has a lot of catching up to do if it is to compete for the home computer market. Granted, people are still buying cheap Dells for home, but at what point does the nightmare of virus checkers, firewalls and spyware scanners increase the true cost of a PC far beyond that of a Mac ?
Before bringing Leopard into the equation, my humble Macbook has destroyed any hope of us using a Windows laptop at home again. 6 hours on a single charge? Video editing? DVD creation? Photo editing and organising? Word processing? Desktop publishing? Spreadsheets? It does all these things with far more style, ease and simplicity than I have ever seen a Windows machine do them, and I’ve been messing around with computers for a long time.