Leopard Claims Half the Japanese OS Market In October 256
hoagiecat writes "Is Apple like all those bands who claim to be "huge in Japan"? Leopard accounted for 53 percent of boxed operating systems sold in Japan in October — even though it was only on sale for the last six days of the month. 'The software went on sale worldwide on Oct. 26 with sales kicking off at 6 p.m. local time in each country. Users in New Zealand and Australia got their hands on Leopard first, but Tokyo saw the first launch at an Apple retail store. About 200 people lined up in light rain to buy the software at Apple's store in the ritzy Ginza district of Tokyo. Lines also formed at other Apple stores across the country and at major electronics retailers, where special events were held to mark the start of sales. Combined with other sales of other operating systems including Tiger, Apple had an overall 60.7 percent share of the market in October -- that's a big jump from the 15.5 percent share it had in September, which was itself the highest share Apple had managed to get so far in 2007. '"
In Japan... (Score:5, Interesting)
Just wait for the true subnotebook or tablet. That is going to sell huge in Japan.
Re:Huge in Japan (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:not entirely surprising (Score:2, Interesting)
This big jump makes sense, really. Who in their right mind would buy Tiger a month before Leopard is coming out,
Actual Usage (Score:5, Interesting)
Anyhow, all this hand-wringing over the best features, like criticisms of 1st gen iPods, misses the point that what works in practice can't be compared to theoretical bests. The iPhone is amazing primarily because of its OS and the fact that web use of EDGE is rare.
When the telcos offer better networks (speed and coverage) hopefully successors to the iPhone 1.0 (including non-Apple competitors) will improve on what the iPhone has to offer. For now, people like you are considered "insightful" for what amounts to a wish list.
Re:I'm not surprised, compare the fonts (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:In Japan... (Score:5, Interesting)
It's possible that you may have fallen victim to Japanese politeness. I know that when I was there, my co-workers and friends teased me about the iPhone (not because I had one, but because I'm American).
"Oh, it has a big screen. How many TV channels can it record simultaneously?" Zero. "Oh, well then, that explains the price! HAHAHA!" (Don't get me started on what my Japanese colleagues considered 'humor', that's another rant in itself)
Japanese phones are, by my estimates, about two years ahead of ours. The only thing about the iPhone that my friends over there found interesting was all the HYPE. They could not see what the big deal was all about.
However, they do have a tendency to say small things are big deals, out of politeness. Can't speak Japanese, except for mumbling a few phrase-book standards? "OH, your Japanese is excellent!" Speak fluent Japanese? "..." (no comment)
You have an iPhone? "Wow, what an amazing phone!" You have a standard Japanese phone that does everything an iPhone can do, plus does your taxes, transforms into a scooter, makes you pudding, and gives you blowjobs? "..."
The rule of thumb is: The cooler/better something is, the less they say about it. The more they talk about it, the less cool/awesome it is.
Re:In Japan... (Score:3, Interesting)
The design is light years ahead of even the best Japanese phones (I have one of au's best summer phones and while I like it a lot and it has a lot of features the iPhone doesn't, like TV and a English/Japanese dictionary) and the UI is better than American phones but still clunky compared to the iPhone.
Re:Huge in Japan (Score:3, Interesting)
My general opinion is that Leopard is by far and away the best OS from Apple so far. The only installation problems I've read about had to do with people who were using APE. http://www.news.com/8301-13579_3-9806005-37.html [news.com] Just out of habit I always do a fresh install so I typically never get bit by these types of issues.
As far as speed/performance is concerned, I found Leopard to *feel* considerably faster on all my machines so far. Whether or not it actually is faster or if Apple is just using tricks to alter my perception, I don't know... But I do know that my perception is that it feels quite a bit faster. When I first installed Leopard on my Mac Pro I was initially very concerned, every time I tried to do something (or doing nothing) my HD would grind away and the system was definitely a lot slower than Tiger. That turned out to just be Spotlight doing it's initial indexing. After an hour or so (I didn't pay attention) the initial index completed and all was well.
Is there room for improvement in Leopard, absolutely. But that whole notion is simply a understood reality, there's always room for improvement. IMHO Leopard is a bigtime improvement to Tiger, and it appears that you're relatively happy with Tiger.
One of the many improvements which is worth the price of admission for me (as dumb as it may be to begin with) connecting to different network devices now happens on a separate thread. Long story short If you're connected to another computer and that computer goes away your machine no longer hangs and becomes unusable while it tries to find it's missing connection.
I've read reviews, and tend to agree that people don't like the transparent menu system or the new 3D Dock. Neither of these things bother me much. In fact I really like the look of the new dock, but that's because I always have mine on the left side of the screen and it won't display in the 3d style with that configuration.
One of the things I both love and hate are Stacks. I really like how Stacks functions. Stacks basically does exactly what I used to do manually but makes it better and more automated. What I hate (and I can't stress this enough) about stacks is that the icon it uses to represent the folder is dynamic. This really lame when you have an applications folder and the icon for the applications folder is AddressBook since it's the first app in the folder (alphabetically.) With a wink and a nudge from a Apple authority I've been lead to believe that Apple is going to change this behavior with a update.
All in all I prefer Leopard to Tiger and I fully recommend the upgrade.
Re:Huge in Japan (Score:3, Interesting)
Regarding stacks: If you don't like the icon, there is a workaround. Basically make a junk file with a custom icon of your choice. Then set its last modified date way in the future. It will always show as the top of the stack.