MacRumors

Apple has seeded the usual technology reviewers with early copies of Mac OS X Leopard for review. The reviews were published tonight. Overall, Leopard is described to be a solid upgrade with only minor bugs encountered in the testing by the reviewers. David Pogue specifically states that he was using the final version of Leopard for a week prior to the review. Compatibility with existing applications is also described as good, and upgrades from existing Tiger installs appeared to go smoothly.

NYTimes - David Pogue
"The most serious misstep in Leopard is its new see-through menus. .... Often, Apples snazzy graphics are justifiable because they make the Mac more fun to use. In this case, though, nothing is gained, and much is lost."
"Otherwise, the only cause for pause is the usual minor set of 1.0 bugs, which Apple generally fixes with software updates after a major release."
"Leopard is powerful, polished and carefully conceived. Happy surprises, and very few disappointments, lie around every corner."

Wall Street Journal - Walt Mossberg
"I did notice a few drawbacks, but they were minor."
"In fact, every piece of software and hardware I tried on two Leopard-equipped Macs -- a loaned laptop from Apple and my own upgraded iMac -- worked fine, exhibiting none of the compatibility problems that continue to plague Vista."
"Leopard isn't a must-have for current Mac owners, but it adds a lot of value."

USA Today - Edward Baig
"I migrated to Leopard from the last OS X version, Tiger, without pain on a MacBook laptop and my own iMac desktop"

Apple is launching Mac OS X Leopard on Friday, October 26th at 6 p.m. There have been a few scattered reports that Mac OS X Leopard has already arrived in the hands of some lucky customers today, but no unboxing photos have yet been published or submitted.

Some retailers have already received their shipments of Mac OS X Leopard. HardMac publishes photos of the Mac OS X Leopard Retail installation DVD:

It appears that some have already obtained legitimate copies of Apple's latest Mac OS X operating system. Meanwhile, many customers are reporting that their Leopard orders have been "prepared for shipment" with a few reports that it has already shipped for some.

Discuss Leopard in our Mac OS X forums and join other MacRumors readers who are organizing meetups in their local regions.

As noted by AppleInsider, Apple sent out a teaser email to mailing list members announcing the Leopard launch event at Apple Stores:

Apple promises Live Demos, free T-shirts, and a chance to be among the first to test-drive the most impressive Mac OS X version yet.

Join other MacRumors readers who are organizing meetups in their local regions.

Despite Apple's efforts to restrict seeding to select individuals, it appears that the final build of Leopard has made its way outside of Apple. One individual who has claimed to have installed the final version of Leopard on their iMac posted his experience. The Mac OS X upgrade took 30 minutes and these were his first impressions:

• All my applications and settings were retained
• Time Machine asked me on the first time I started in leopard, which of my five external Hard Drives should be used for backups. I didn't have to configure anything else
• When I started Mail for the first time, it had to upgrade the mail database. After that, Mail is blazing fast!
• I told Mail to import my RSS Feeds from Safari but that didn't work!
• Reading RSS in Mail is nice to have
• Tasks in Mail appear even if completed. That might be a bit distracting for some people
• Mail is FAST! Seeing is believing!
• Finder: Well, the first time it ran, it hanged! After killing the process, I was amazed by the speed and coverflow!
• Quick View: COOL - GREAT FEATURE
• Safari is blazing fast!
• .mac has the option to synchronize settings and Dock items
• Stacks: I am not impressed. I like the downloads stack though. I had to manually change the path in Mail and Safari though!
• Spaces: I created 4 Spaces and I find it a very cool feature, especially the live ala expose preview
• Applications start instantly, especially iLife and iWork!
• iCal is much better. There is an inline editor and an event drop box now
• Contacts is more or less the same
• iTunes seems much faster than before

Apple's Mac OS X Leopard 10.5 operating system officially launches on Friday, October 26th, 2007.

Copies of Mac OS X Leopard not sanctioned by Apple may reflect illegal distribution of copyrighted material and cannot be condoned. Any requests for or provision of illegal software distributions in our forums will result in post deletion and account banning.

Apple's Gold Master (Retail) version of Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard has at least one visual tweak over the developer seeds. It appears Apple has listened to user feedback about the visual inconsistency with dock items appearing on a 3d shelf on the Left and Right side of the screen (old screenshot).

Click for larger

Apple has updated the Dock so that it has a 2-Dimensional appearance when it resides on the side of the screen. When residing on the bottom of the screen, the Dock retains the 3d shelf appearance.

Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard will officially launch on October 26th at 6 p.m. If you haven't already ordered online ($20 off), MacRumors readers are organizing meetups in their local regions.

Update: Apparently the same simple style can be used for the dock when it is on the bottom: screenshot

Apple announced today that they would be offering a special digital box set containing Led Zeppelin's entire discography, "The Complete Led Zeppelin," for exclusive pre-order on iTunes.

We're excited to offer Led Zeppelin's entire catalog as a special digital box set with this pre-order," said Eddy Cue, Apple's vice president of iTunes. "Now you can get all of the band's albums with one click for an incredible $99."

Led Zeppelin's entire catalog of songs and albums will also be available for individual purchase and download beginning November 13. Led Zeppelin had been one of the high profile hold-outs on digital distribution of their music.

NYTimes reports on Apple's efforts to bring more content and visibility to the Movie section of the iTunes Store.

On November 20th, iTunes will serve as the exclusive launch for the independent film "Purple Violets" directed by Edward Burns. This is the first time that a feature film will make its commercial debut on iTunes.

In late September, iTunes also distributed a free 13-minute short "Hotel Chevalier" as a promotional vehicle for the film "Darjeeling Limited".

Apple's iTunes movie segment has seen some success but still houses less than 1,000 titles. Movie studios have reportedly been reluctant to provide additional content due to disagreements in pricing and digital rights management.

Apple has announced their financial results for their 4th quarter 2007 (July - September 2007). Apple posted revenue of $6.22 billion and net quarterly profit of $904 million, or $1.01 per diluted share. These results compare to revenue of $4.84 billion and net quarterly profit of $542 million, or $.62 per diluted share, in the year-ago quarter.

Apple shipped 2,164,000 Macintosh(R) computers, representing 34 percent growth over the year-ago quarter and exceeding the previous quarterly record for Mac shipments by 400,000. Apple sold 10,200,000 iPods during the quarter, representing 17 percent growth over the year-ago quarter. Quarterly iPhone sales were 1,119,000, bringing cumulative fiscal 2007 sales to 1,389,000.

"We are very pleased to have generated over $24 billion in revenue and $3.5 billion in net income in fiscal 2007," said Steve Jobs, Apple's CEO. "We're looking forward to a strong December quarter as we enter the holiday season with Apple's best products ever."

"Apple ended the fiscal year with $15.4 billion in cash and no debt," said Peter Oppenheimer, Apple's CFO. "Looking ahead to the first quarter of fiscal 2008, we expect revenue of about $9.2 billion and earnings per diluted share of about $1.42."

Apple will be broadcasting their FY 07 Fourth Quarter Results Conference Call live via Quicktime beginning at 2:00pm PDT, 5:00pm EDT. We will provide highlights and a summary of the call here.

Q&A Highlights:

Reiterates that the iPhone is a multiyear exclusive agreement with AT&T
Direct sales 57% of total company revenue. Up from 53% in year-ago quarter.
Europe sales did not have typical lull in August.
Holiday quarter is usually a big quarter for iPods.
Sales of iPhones accelerated after price drop.
Confident in shipping 10 million iPhones in Calendar 2008
Still on target to get iPhone in Asia in Calendar 2008
Japan continues to be the most challenging major market. iMac was well received.
Over 40,000 iPod Distribution locations, 8700 Mac Distribution locations
Apple rep guesses that 250,000 iPhones sold to unlockers
Apple Working with Salesforce.com
No updates on Enterprise testing of iPhone.
Vast majority of Macs in the last 4 years able to run Leopard. ~21 million Macs.
15 million were eligible to run Tiger when it launched
Over 50% of Macs sold in Retail stores were sold to individuals who had never owned a Mac before
Most successful back to school season they have ever had.

Raw Data: Apple Press Release
Reference Data: 4Q 2006 Financial Results
Transcript: Seeking Alpha transcript of Conference call.

In an interview with the New York Times, Apple CEO Steve Jobs said that the Macintosh has a lot of momentum and the upcoming Mac OS 10.5 Leopard release will anchor a schedule of product upgrades that may continue as long as a decade.

"The Macintosh has a lot of momentum now," said Steven P. Jobs, Apple's chief executive, in a telephone interview last week. "It is outpacing the industry."

Recent numbers from research firm Gartner back up Mr. Job's claim, indicating that Apple's U.S. 3Q 2007 market share rose to 8.1%.

Mr. Jobs also indicated that Apple's pace of OS releases will continue at a similar pace.

"I'm quite pleased with the pace of new operating systems every 12 to 18 months for the foreseeable future," he said. "We've put out major releases on the average of one a year, and it's given us the ability to polish and polish and improve and improve."

In 2004, Apple had said that it was slowing down its development of the Mac OS because the current pace had not been sustainable (Apple had released Mac OS 10.0, 10.1, 10.2, and 10.3 between 2001 and 2004). Since then, Apple has released Mac OS 10.4 Tiger, and will be release 10.5 Leopard this Friday.

By comparison, Microsoft has only released two consumer OS's since 2001: XP and Vista. The New York Times references a rumor that the next Windows release, code-named Windows 7, may not come until 2010.