Apple to Let a New Cat Out of the Bag

With a solid reputation for software innovation and ease of use combined with a US$129 price tag, the OS should do just fine, Tim Bajarin, president of Creative Strategies, told MacNewsWorld.

"There is always a pent-up demand from the Mac faithful and they will be lining up to get it from the start," he said.

Although analyst Rob Enderle has heard comments from Mac users who were late to adopt Tiger, the current generation Mac OS, he believes that with clever marketing, Apple will be able to draw out a significant percentage of its base.

"Apple typically does a very good job marketing their programs," Enderle, principal analyst at Enderle Group, told MacNewsWorld. "I think they'll get a good chunk of their base to move [to Leopard].

Apple Guy Where Are You?

Jam-packed with more than 300 new features, Leopard is billed by Apple as "the most impressive Mac OS X version." So it might not be outrageous to think that Apple would have commercials with the Apple Guy beating the PC Guy over the head with everything Macs supposedly do better than PCs.

However, unlike Microsoft's (Nasdaq: MSFT) launch of Vista last January, Apple has launched a rather restrained effort to get the word out.

"They have different approaches to marketing their programs," Bajarin explained. "Microsoft has to get the cooperation from hundreds of partners and rely on them to help get the interest and marketing noise up, while Apple has control of all of this within Apple itself.

"Apple is a master of using the media, its stores and its broader retail partners to push Leopard, and they have tighter control in how they market this OS and get their users to upgrade fast," he added.

However, while Apple has tagged the OS as "the most impressive" Enderle said the anticipation level is much lower than he saw with the 2002 release of Jaguar, the third major version of the Max OS X operating system.

"In terms of overall excitement, Jaguar had the highest. That is the benchmark in terms of excitement for a new platform. And certainly Tiger did well also. We'll see how this ramps next week but this doesn't seem to have the level of excitement wrapped around it that Jaguar and Tiger did," he explained.

However, he noted that Apple is good at getting people ramped up the day of a product launch, and just because it is not visible the day before does not mean that things may not have changed by time the OS goes on Apple store shelves. "Apple is expert at this."

"Having said that," Enderle continued, "there appear to be nice improvements throughout, and coupled with the increased traffic at Apple stores from the iPhone and the iPod touch, I think they'll take some market share points."

No Hype Here

Leopard is a definite step forward for Apple and Mac users. Both Enderle and Bajarin told MacNewsWorld that Leopard is an evolution for the OS, but Bajarin also sees it as a revolutionary step.

"Apple uses the OS X core and evolves it, but then introduces revolutionary new features whenever they deliver any major upgrades to the OS itself," he stated.

Of the operating system's hundreds of new features, Bajarin and Enderle point to functions such as Time Machine -- which automatically backs up the system, storing system data, files, applications, accounts, preferences and media on an external hard drive -- and BootCamp -- which enables the Mac to run Windows XP and Vista operating systems -- as truly groundbreaking.

"There are over 300 new features in Leopard, and it is by far their most aggressive upgrade to date. New features like Time Machine and 3-D Dock with Stacks, which delivers a new way to organize files, and Quick Look, which makes it quick and easy to look into files, is taking the concept of an OS and what it does for a user to a new level," Bajarin said.

"I'm reasonably impressed. It's an evolutionary product, not revolutionary. It's a point release. They've done some nice things in regard to backups in Time Machine. That and Spotlight are the two initial high points. And I understand that BootCamp is a lot better," Enderle said. "They will probably get some Windows folks to come across."

Visions of Dollar Signs

Macs have a reputation as an expensive piece of hardware; however, both analysts said that Macs are much more competitively price for consumers looking for a well-priced high-end system. Leopard's $129 price is a result of Apple's philosophy that its software should be within reach of everyone, they said.

"The Macs have become much more price competitive, and the fact that Apple is selling Macs in record numbers suggest that people are willing to pay the minor premium to get a system that is easier to use than Windows and yet has all the power they need in a computer," Bajarin noted.

"We expect Apple to have record sales of Macs in this coming quarter, and Leopard will be one of the key reasons they will sell more Macs this fall," he concluded.