Today Apple announced it sold more than 2 million copies of Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard in its first weekend. “Early indications are that Leopard will be a huge hit with customers,” said CEO Steve Jobs in the press release, though he might be just a teensy bit biased.

I’m guessing Apple is seizing this opportunity to gloat because demand for Leopard – like the iPhone -- will never be so high as on its first weekend.

But whether 2 million is a big number depends on how you look at it. For example, Leopard’s achievement compares very well to its predecessor, Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger, which took 5 weeks to sell 2 million copies.

Comparing Leopard to Vista, the latest incarnation of Microsoft’s Windows, shows the value of holding more than 90 percent of the operating system market. Though widely criticized, Vista sold 20 million copies in its first two months – nearly the same number as every Leopard-capable Mac in existence. (Apple Chief Operating Officer Timothy Cook estimated during the company’s recent earnings conference call that currently about 21 million Macs are Leopard capable – an impressive number considering the large number of older Macs that do not meet Leopard’s minimum specs.) Windows XP sold 17 million copies in its first two months back in 2001.

During Microsoft’s recent earnings conference call, the company reported that 85 million licenses for Vista had been sold this year. True, most of those were pre-installed on Windows PCs sold by the likes of Dell and Hewlett-Packard, but still. It’s a daunting number from the Mac perspective (not to mention the even smaller number of fans of the Linux OS).

Then again, Leopard already has been hacked to run on ordinary Windows PCs. Apple surely won’t be happy about it, but what if it catches on? We might well hear Apple report at their January earnings conference call that hundreds of thousands of copies of Leopard were “purchased with the intent of being run on non-Apple hardware.” How crazy would that be?

Posted by David Zeiler at 3:49 PM in Mac OS X, Mac market share | Permalink | Comments (2)
                       

As expected, thousands and thousands of eager Mac users rushed out to buy and install the new version of Mac OS X, Leopard, over the weekend. And for some it did not go well.

The most common Leopard install problem, in all its cruel irony, is a Windows-like Blue Screen of Death as the Mac nears the end of the install process. Affected users report a system hang with a blank blue screen. Ugh.

The finger of blame has pointed mainly to third-party software from Unsanity, specifically its Application Enhancer system hack that enables several of the company’s utilities to alter parts of the Mac operating system (they’re actually called “haxies”). As a long-time fan of Unsanity’s FruitMenu, which creates a fully customizable Apple Menu, I have had APE installed on my Macs for years. It’s unfortunate, if not surprising, that such software would create problems with a new version of the Mac OS.

Unsanity says the problem could be caused by incarnations of APE earlier than version 2.0 that users still may be running on PowerPC-based Macs. Previous versions of APE won’t run on Intel-based Macs, so these newer Macs appear to be immune to the problem.

Some affected Mac users who found a way to delete the APE components were able to install Leopard successfully. An easier option for less technically adventurous users afflicted with the dreaded blue screen is to reboot the Mac with the Leopard DVD and re-install using the “Archive and Install” option (instead of the default “Upgrade” option). This should remove the offending components and allow Leopard to install properly.

To make matters worse, some users have reported unusually long install times apart from the APE issue. Apparently the installer does a full hardware check before rebooting the system. Some who called Apple’s support line said they were told this process could take up to three hours. Because the APE issue causes a permanent hang at the same point in the installation, many users can’t be sure how long to wait before giving up and attempting a re-install.

My advice: Use “Archive and Install” and be patient, no matter how much the wait kills you.

Posted by David Zeiler at 1:56 PM in Mac OS X | Permalink | Comments (7)
                       

As all loyal Macolytes know, Apple's latest revision of its operating system, Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard, goes on sale at 6 p.m. this evening. But for those yearning to upgrade this weekend, I offer these few words of caution:

Know your specs: Leopard should be a great upgrade for any Intel-based Mac. Likewise, any PowerPC G5-based Mac should do fine. Many G4 Macs qualify, but the CPU speed must be 867 MHz or higher. That means the dual 800 MHz Quicksilver, for instance, doesn’t make the cut. And no G3 Mac qualifies. (Concerns that older Macs that barely qualified might suffer a performance hit by upgrading to Leopard appear to have been negated.)

No more Classic: This is not an issue if you already have an Intel-based Mac; Classic doesn’t work on those anyway. But Leopard will nix Classic on PowerPC Macs that ran that the Mac OS 9 emulator under Tiger just fine. If you have a PowerPC Mac that otherwise qualifies for Leopard but you still use Classic for anything important, Leopard may not be for you. Unless your Mac can boot directly into OS 9 (and even that can be a pain), you’d be stuck.

No wireless Time Machine: One of Leopard’s most highly touted features, the automated backup system Apple calls Time Machine has an Achilles Heel. It can’t back up wirelessly to a networked hard drive. One must have a hard drive attached physically to the Mac via USB or FireWire (or I would assume, a spare drive bay in a Mac Pro). Time Machine can back up over a network to a server or another Mac running Leopard, but that isn't a practical solution for most home users. A lot of Mac users are upset over this, as Apple’s Time Machine features page on its Web site formerly said specifically that the feature would be able to back up wirelessly to hard drives connected to an Airport Extreme Base Station. Laptop owners will find this drawback particularly inconvenient. So far Apple has offered no explanation for dropping this once-promised capability.

The usual warnings: Although Leopard is the sixth version of Mac OS X, it has changed significantly and could break software – particularly utilities – that people depend on. Wise Mac users will wait for the early adopters to suffer through the early days of finding out which things break while the companies that make the software scramble to get out patches to fix the problems. Usually all such issues get straightened out within a few months of the release of a new version of OS X. Trust me, your patience will be rewarded.

I realize all this advice will fall on deaf ears among those can’t resist the pull of having the new OS on their Mac right now. Just remember: tempting as it is, upgrading an operating system always entails some degree of risk.

I will be sharing my thoughts on Leopard’s features as soon as I can get a copy on my Macs and spend some quality time playing with it.

Posted by David Zeiler at 4:40 PM in Mac OS X | Permalink | Comments (6)
                       

Apple made the list because it sells Hannah Montana videos, TV episodes and albums through the iTunes Store. But Tribune?

According to the Stockpickr.com site, Hannah Montana is filmed at Tribune Co. Studios at KTLA Channel 5 in Los Angeles. I had no inkling that I worked for a company associated with such greatness.

The other companies on the list are: Disney (for obvious reasons); Nintendo (for its Hannah video games); Time Warner (for its coverage of the show in People and Time magazines); CBRL Group (because Cracker Barrel is one of Miley Cyrus’s favorite restaurants); Yum! Brands (Long John Silver’s is Miley’s other favorite restaurant); Vivendi (because Billy Ray Cyrus, Miley’s father in real life and on the show, has written songs for Universal Music Group that have been used on the show); Warner Music Group (same reason as Vivendi); and JAKKS Pacific (it distributes Hannah-themed toys).

Full disclosure: Having a young daughter has resulted in my own frequent exposure to Hannah Montana TV episodes and songs. I’m a fan, too.

Posted by David Zeiler at 12:28 PM in AAPL stock news | Permalink | Comments (14)
                       

While it won’t be available until 2009, Korean electronics company Samsung unveiled a new type of flash memory chip that it says will enable the manufacture of 128-gigabyte memory cards. Oh, what Apple could do with a 128 GB flash card.

Apple uses flash memory in many of its products, most notably its iPods and iPhone. Flash memory requires less power and is far less fragile than a hard drive, but provides much less storage space -- at least in the capacities available today. While the hard drive-based iPod Classic comes in 80 GB and 160 GB versions – capable of holding 20,000 songs and 40,000 songs respectively – the 16 GB iPod Touch, Apple’s largest-capacity flash-based product, holds just 3,500 songs.

The availability of even 64 or 32 GB flash memory would invigorate the entire iPod product line. A 128 GB Nano would almost certainly kill the iPod Classic. And the introduction of higher-capacity iPhones would help keep that product moving off the shelves.

But it’s not just iPods and iPhones that would benefit from beefier sizes of flash memory. Apple and other PC makers would love to replace the hard drives in their laptops with flash memory to help stretch battery life and provide a hardier storage mechanism less prone to damage if the device is accidentally dropped. Apple is supposedly planning to include flash memory in future Mac laptops to enable much faster startup times.

Knowing Apple, uses like that would just be the beginning. I can envision the Apple skunkworks in Cupertino dreaming up entirely new products. In the near-term, such chips could be very valuable as part of Apple’s long-rumored “mini-computer” that allegedly uses the same touch screen technology as the iPhone.

Over the past several years Apple has gained a reputation as a flash memory hog, gobbling up supplies worldwide from many chipmakers, including Samsung. If I were Steve Jobs I’d be on the next plane to Korea.

Posted by David Zeiler at 1:55 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)
                       

Led Zeppelin is coming to the iTunes Store, and it’s coming in a big way.

Apple today announced it will make the entire Led Zeppelin catalog available on iTunes as of Nov. 13. Though representatives of the legendary rock group announced this several weeks ago, they did not tell us about “The Complete Led Zeppelin,” a digital box set of all the band’s albums that includes 165 songs for $99. The iTunes Store will offer this item exclusively.

As of today Zep fans can pre-order the box set as well as “Mothership,” the previously announced 24-track compilation album consisting of songs selected by the three surviving band members.

Anyone who pre-orders either of the new releases will automatically be entered in a contest to win tickets to see the band’s reunion show Nov. 26 in London, along with round-trip airfare and hotel accommodations.

Since Apple’s press release fails to mention whether the tracks will be available DRM-free via iTunes Plus, we’ll have to assume it won’t. That’s too bad.

And I’m also wondering whether the digital box set is a good deal. True, you get 165 songs for $99, making it 60 cents per song rather than the usual 99 cents. But as far as I know Led Zeppelin produced less than 100 original songs, which means there will be a lot of duplication in this collection. Even if you consider live versions as distinct songs, you’re going to end up with more than one copy of quite a few songs.

Meanwhile, the Beatles-on-iTunes vigil goes on…

Posted by David Zeiler at 6:18 PM in iTunes/iTunes Store | Permalink | Comments (1)
                       

By now anyone reading this will know that Apple reported another blockbuster quarter yesterday. I listened to the conference call last night and heard a number of tidbits neglected in many news stories. But before I give you those, here’s a summary of the results and my thoughts on what they mean:

Apple did not set an all-time record for quarterly earnings but did break its record for the September quarter by raking in $6.2 billion in revenue for a profit of $904 million. The profit was a whopping 67 percent year-over-year increase and far exceeded analyst predictions ($1.01 per share versus 85 cents per share).

All segments contributed. Though overshadowed by the iPod and iPhone in terms of publicity, the Mac chipped in with 2.16 million units, responsible for 62 percent of Apple’s revenue. It broke the previous quarterly record for Mac shipments by 400,000 and represented a year-over-year growth rate of 34 percent, a rate consistent with the last four quarters. By comparison, the worldwide PC market grew just 14.4 percent and the U.S. PC market only 4.7 percent, according to Gartner’s third quarter market share report. No wonder Mac market share keeps increasing.

The iPod sold 10.2 million units, a 17 percent increase over the year-ago quarter. This is impressive when you consider that the new models weren’t introduced until Sept. 5, three weeks before the quarter ended, and that the iPod faced in-house competition from its iPhone cousin.

The iPhone, for its part, sold 1.1 million units for the quarter. Apple Chief Operating Officer Timothy Cook credited the controversial $200 price drop with helping to spur sales. More on the iPhone later.

Oppenheimer didn’t have much to say about its software sales, which includes such items as iLife, iWork, and Final Cut Studio, but that broad category pulled its weight with a 36 percent year-over-year revenue boost.

Apple’s “other music-related products and services” category, which includes the iTunes Store, had revenue growth of 33 percent year over year. Oppenheimer said the iTunes Store had an incredible 85 percent of the paid digital download market for music in the United States according to Nielsen SoundScan data.

Apple’s retail stores experienced 42 percent growth in revenue (further proving that Gateway simply executed the retail concept poorly). As usual, Oppenheimer noted that 50 percent of the customers buying Macs were new to the platform, which jibes with the boffo sales numbers.

To keep the momentum going, Apple plans to open 40 more retail stores over the next year, both in the United States and abroad, including one in Beijing next summer.

But enough of the basics. Here are some other nuggets I gleaned from the conference call:

Talking up the enterprise: In response to a question about Mac and iPhone sales to small and medium businesses, Cook said Apple is “doing well there and growing” and that “we’re providing a solution in iPhone that many businesses love.” Given that Apple historically has paid little heed to businesses, preferring to focus on its image as a consumer electronics company, Cook’s statement might signal that Cupertino is preparing to actively court the enterprise market.

iPhone sales: Oppenheimer repeated Apple’s expectation that it will sell 10 million iPhones in the calendar year 2008. It won’t be easy. When Apple cut the price of the iPhone, Piper Jaffray’s Gene Munster did a survey on daily iPhone sales, estimating 9,000 phones per day before the price cut and 27,000 per day after. He also called that “unsustainable,” offering 13,500 as a more realistic number. For Apple to sell 10 million iPhones in 2008, it will need to average about 27,400 per day. Of course, in 2008 Apple will be selling the iPhone in Europe and eventually Asia.

Unlocked iPhones: Many pundits had guessed the number of people buying iPhones to unlock them for use on a network other than AT&T’s was in the 2 to 5 percent range, though Munster earlier this month had guessed 10 percent. Cook said Apple has estimated 250,000 of the 1.4 million iPhones sold were purchased with the intent to unlock -- close to 18 percent of the total.

Cash: Apple now has $15.4 billion in cash and no debt. Last year at this time it had $10.1 billion and in 2005 it had $8.26 billion. Talk about a cash cow.

High guidance? Oppenheimer stunned the analysts on the conference call by offering guidance of 9.2 billion in revenue for the December quarter, $700 million higher than current analyst projections and a 28 percent increase year over year. Apple is legendary for lowballing in its guidance and then beating it handily. With new iMacs, new iPods and the iPhone launching overseas going into the holiday buying season, the company’s most lucrative quarter, Apple could be feeling more confident than usual. But consider this: the September quarter revenue it reported yesterday represented a 29 percent increase year over year. Perhaps guiding at 28 percent is not so outlandish after all.

Posted by David Zeiler at 1:06 PM in AAPL stock news | Permalink
                       

I’m not sure if Apple should be flattered or nervous that nations like the United Arab Emirates – which as far as I know was not expected to get the iPhone any time soon – already are fretting over how to handle its arrival.

Today an item in Gulfnews.com reports that the UAE, a small but wealthy nation on the coast of the Persian Gulf, has a law similar to one in France that makes locking a mobile phone to a single carrier illegal. From the Gulfnews.com article: “The Telecommunications Regulatory Authority has said that it will not allow any company to establish an exclusive right to iPhone services with either of the two licensed telecom operators in the UAE.”

That makes two countries so far with laws forbidding cell phones locked to one carrier. It stands to reason there are others. As Apple rolls out the iPhone throughout the world in the coming weeks and months, it will find selling an unlocked version a necessity in more and more places. And once Apple starts selling unlocked iPhones anywhere, it will get much harder for Apple to defend selling locked phones, particularly here in the United States.

Adding to the pressure will be folks buying unlocked iPhones in countries where they are available and transporting them for profit to those where they are not. At some point Apple almost certainly will have to give in and sell unlocked iPhones everywhere.

Posted by David Zeiler at 2:11 PM in iPhone | Permalink | Comments (3)
                       

In the interest of redirecting more of my energies to following Apple news and writing posts based on that news, I have decided to discontinue the weekly Monday morning Macware feature of this blog.

That doesn’t mean I won’t write about cool freeware or software ever again, just that I won’t be doing it on a weekly basis. Should I come across something I think a lot of readers would find useful, I will let you know.

All previous entries will remain accessible as always, though I have added the word “archive” to the category link at right since it will no longer be a regular feature.

Posted by David Zeiler at 3:40 AM in ~Monday morning Macware (archive) | Permalink | Comments (2)
                       

I didn’t get the chance to write about several key developments in Apple’s always busy world last week, so I’m catching up today:

Poisons in the iPhone: On Monday Greenpeace released a report criticizing Apple’s iPhone for containing environmentally hazardous chemicals. “Steve Jobs has missed the call on making the iPhone his first step toward greening Apple’s products. It seems Apple is far from leading the way for a green electronics industry as competitors like Nokia already sell phones free of PVC,” said Zeina Alhajj, identified on Greenpeace’s Web site as the organization’s “toxics campaigner.”

To compound matters, the Greenpeace report inspired the Center for Environmental Health to initiate legal action against Apple under California’s Proposition 65 law, which says products containing toxins must carry a warning label.

Apple issued a statement back on May 2 outlining its policy for phasing out various toxic chemicals from its products. On the PVC chemicals cited by Greenpeace, the policy states: “Apple plans to completely eliminate the use of PVC and BFRs [brominated flame retardants] in its products by the end of 2008. As I glance at the calendar, I see we’re still in 2007. The iPhone that went on sale in June was actually completed before January, when Jobs revealed it to the public. You’d think Greenpeace would have given Apple until next year before excoriating the iPhone.

And while today’s iPhone does contain some traces of hazardous chemicals, even the Greenpeace report concedes that the product complies with the European Union’s tough RoHS (Restriction of Hazardous Substances) Directive.

So why pick on Apple?

Reporting for the U.K.’s Register news site, Tony Smith submits: “We'd guess it's because Apple is an easy target, and Greenpeace knows iPhone related commentary gains press coverage.” Dozens of comments posted on Web sites that reported the news agreed, overwhelmingly blasting Greenpeace. But if generating publicity by going after Apple was Greenpeace’s primary aim, it succeeded. Unfortunately it gave Apple a black eye it didn’t deserve.

iPhone in France: A month after the announcement of iPhone deals for the U.K. and Germany, Apple on Tuesday announced its delayed agreement with Orange of France. The iPhone will debut Nov. 29, just in time for the holiday shopping season, and will cost €399 ($560). This much was expected.

But the interesting bit, reported in the International Herald Tribune, is that an unlocked version of the iPhone will be available for a higher, though undisclosed price. Apple was hog-tied by a French law that prohibits “bundling the sale of a mobile phone and a mobile operator,” according to the Tribune report.

The existence of legitimately unlocked iPhones in France raises the likelihood that entrepreneurs will buy them up there to export to customers in other countries who will pay a premium to have them. Apple already might have built in a way to prevent this, but any such mechanism couldn’t be as hard to crack as the original iPhone lock. In any case, the existence of an unlocked version of the iPhone will give those incensed over this issue fresh ammunition.

DRM-free songs get cheaper: Apple said it’s dropping the price of songs without copy protection from $1.29 to the same 99¢ as songs with DRM. All “iTunes Plus” tracks will still be available in the higher 256 kbps bitrate (double the 128 kbps of regular iTunes songs). Two million songs now are available in the DRM-free format, compared with more than six million copy-protected songs.

Apple appears to be responding to the challenge of the Amazon MP3 store. With Amazon selling DRM-free MP3s for 89¢, Apple’s $1.29 per song looked awfully expensive. Though the iTunes Store still has several big advantages over its rivals – a huge catalog, a superior user experience and a better encoding format in AAC over MP3 –price is the one area competitors like Amazon and Wal-Mart can beat it on.

Apple’s advantages will allow it to keep its prices a little higher than the others, but not 40 to 50 percent higher. Apple wisely made the price cut quickly rather than wait for large numbers of price-conscious customers to abandon iTunes. Such timely reaction to the changing market will continue to be crucial in light of Universal’s aggressive strategy to partner with every possible iTunes alternative in its quest to weaken iTunes’ dominant position.

One more thing: Prepare to be impressed when Apple reports earnings after the market close Monday.

Posted by David Zeiler at 5:04 PM in iPhone, iTunes/iTunes Store | Permalink | Comments (1)
                       

Macs continue to gain ground in U.S. market share, but how much exactly?

Research companies IDC and Gartner both have released their third quarter reports on PC market share. They agree the Mac has picked up U.S. market share from Windows-based PCs, but disagree on how much.

Gartner reports a 37.2 percent increase year-over-year in total Mac units sold (including notebooks and desktops) in the U.S., from 975,000 in 2006 to 1,338,000 in 2007. The increase raises the Mac’s market share from 6.2 percent to 8.1 percent, the largest overall U.S. market share number I’ve seen for the Mac in a very long time. It puts Apple in third place behind Dell with 29.1 percent and Hewlett-Packard at 25.7 percent. Trailing Apple are Toshiba (5.7 percent ) and Gateway (5.2 percent).

IDC puts Apple’s U.S. sales at 1,127,000 Macs in the third quarter of 2007 compared to 973,000 in 2006. That makes Apple’s market share 6.3 percent -- an improvement over the 5.7 percent it had in the third quarter of 2007 but significantly lower than Gartner’s number.

Why is Gartner’s Mac market share so much higher? And who’s right?

Somehow IDC arrived at lower sales for Apple than Gartner did while figuring higher sales for both Dell (5,010,000 units versus 4,833,000) and H-P (4,346,000 versus 4,260,000). Apparently the methodologies IDC and Gartner use differ significantly, though the companies’ press releases contained no clues as to how they calculated their numbers. And both companies advise that these figures are preliminary estimates that precede the actual data the PC companies will release in their earnings reports over the next few weeks.

The real data from the PC companies will give us a more accurate picture of what’s going on, but we never seem to get definitive agreement from the research companies and survey organizations.

Discrepancies aside, one trend appears indisputable: the Mac’s market share has been rising for the past two years. If Apple can keep the momentum going it could crack double digits in U.S. market share for the first time since the early 1990s.

Posted by David Zeiler at 3:35 PM in Mac market share | Permalink
                       

Apple boss Steve Jobs posted a note on Apple’s Hot News section of its Web site this morning in which he changes the company’s position on allowing third party applications to be written for the iPhone – an issue that prompted many of the controversial iPhone hacks.

While this issue has not been as contentious as the ability to unlock the iPhone for use on other cellular networks, it nevertheless had irked many, if not more, iPhone customers. This change will take the iPhone a big step closer to realizing its potential as an ultra-portable mini-computer.

It should also help repair Apple’s relationship with those upset over the closed nature of the iPhone, although I doubt the people who had already hacked their phones – and had them “bricked” by Apple’s recent software update to the device – will forgive the company any time soon. (I know many feel such people created their own problem by hacking the phone in the first place, but most of them blame Apple. Sigh.)

Some may still grumble because the iPhone SDK (software developers kit), the tool developers need to write programs for the iPhone, will not be available until February. In his statement Jobs counsels patience “because we’re trying to do two diametrically opposed things at once – provide an advanced and open platform to developers while at the same time protect iPhone users from viruses, malware, privacy attacks, etc.”

Jobs also responds to critics who had ridiculed his previous explanations about why the iPhone was a closed platform: “There have been serious viruses on other mobile phones already, including some that silently spread from phone to phone over the cell network. As our phones become more powerful, these malicious programs will become more dangerous. And since the iPhone is the most advanced phone ever, it will be a highly visible target.”

I personally can’t speak to how easy it might be to create malware for a mobile device like the iPhone, but in the brief time it has been publicly available many determined people have managed both to unlock the iPhone and create unauthorized third party applications. So I think Jobs’ caution is justified.

In a “P.S.” note tacked on the end of his statement, Jobs mentions that the SDK will work with the iPod Touch, sort of a “one more thing” like those he so often drops on audiences at his keynotes. That should please many iPod Touch owners, who hadn’t been nearly as vocal about this issue as had iPhone owners.

Posted by David Zeiler at 1:03 PM | Permalink | Comments (5)
                       

Confirming rumors that have circulated for several weeks, Apple this morning finally issued a press release announcing that Mac OS X Leopard will indeed go on sale Friday, Oct. 26 at 6 p.m. and that Apple’s online store now is accepting pre-orders (though Amazon.com has been accepting pre-orders since June.)

Also confirmed is Leopard’s minimum CPU of an 867 MHz G4 or better, which includes all G5 Macs and all the newer Intel-based Macs, but excludes a lot of iMacs and PowerBooks from a few years ago. See Apple’s system requirements page for more specifics.

In addition to reiterating all of Leopard’s previously announced features, such as Stacks and Time machine, the release throws in a quote from Steve Jobs that includes a swipe at Windows Vista’s multiple versions and pricing levels: “Leopard, the sixth major release of Mac OS X, is the best upgrade we’ve ever released. And everyone gets the ‘Ultimate’ version, packed with all the new innovative features, for just $129.”

The Family Pack, which allows users to install Leopard on up to five Macs in one household, is $199, the same as Tiger before it.

But what about people who just bought a new Mac last week? Here’s the deal, straight from the press release: “The standard Mac OS Up-To-Date upgrade package is available to all customers who purchased a qualifying new Mac system from Apple or an Apple Authorized Reseller on or after October 1, 2007 for a shipping and handling fee of $9.95 (US).”

That means if you bought a shiny new Mac on Sept. 30, tough bananas. You get to pay $129 like everyone else. This actually is a slight improvement over previous OS upgrades -- only people who bought after the official announcement were eligible for the Up-To-Date discount. I still think Apple should extend the program to customers who bought new Macs 60 or even 90 days before a new version of OS X is announced, but I suppose we should applaud the extra two weeks this time around as progress.

The only other question remaining now is the one I asked in a post last week: how well will Leopard run on older PowerPC-based Macs? Reader responses to that post, including several from folks running developer releases of Leopard, indicated that older PowerPC Macs like my 867 Quicksilver run Leopard about as well as Tiger. Apparently the key is not the CPU but the GPU, the graphics card. Because successive versions of Mac OS X have pushed more and more of the eye candy to the graphics card, that plays a greater role than the CPU in how well Leopard will run on your Mac.

We’ll find out for certain on Oct. 26.

Posted by David Zeiler at 1:27 PM in Mac OS X | Permalink | Comments (2)
                       

While the portability of laptops is the main reason they’ve grown increasingly popular, that portability comes a price, namely rechargeable batteries. Not only do these batteries limit how long you can use the computer away from a power outlet, they gradually lose their ability to hold a charge.

That’s why laptop users need to be able to check the health of their computer’s battery periodically. True, you can always go to the Energy Saver System Preferences Pane and click on the “Show battery status in menu bar” option if you just want to know how much juice is left, but it’s helpful to know exactly how much of a charge your laptop battery can still hold, and how close it is to requiring replacement. Here are a few of the better options among the Mac battery freeware and shareware out there (all are Universal Binary, good for both PowerPC and Intel Macs):

CoconutBattery: Perhaps the most elegant of the freeware options, CoconutBattery offers a single gray window with three panes and lime green indicator bars. One pane shows the current battery charge and another current battery capacity, indicating how much of your original capacity your battery has lost since you’ve owned it. A bottom pane of “Additional Info” shows you “battery load cycles” (how many times you’ve recharged the battery) and the age of your Mac laptop in months. CoconutBattery even has a Dashboard Widget available.

Battery Health Monitor: Another freeware option, not quite as pretty as CoconutBattery, but gives you most of the same information. Battery Health Monitor has a grid at the top that shows you the power status of the laptop. When plugged in, the word “A/C Power” is bold for example; when on battery power, the word is grayed out. Other indicators include “Battery Depleted” and “Not Chargeable,” neither of which you’ll want to see bolded. Battery Health Monitor also tells you how many charge cycles the battery has gone through as well as the current voltage the battery is delivering.

SlimBatteryMonitor: This piece of freeware is essentially a fancy replacement for Apple’s battery icon. While it does not provide any of the supplemental data the other options do, SlimBatteryMonitor’s main attraction is that it takes up less space in the menu bar than Apple’s built-in version and is much more customizable, particularly in the colors you can choose for the battery icon.

iBatt2: I had the earlier version of this on my old G3 500 iBook, and it helped me track issues with two aging batteries. It’s $19 shareware, but does offer more than the other apps. iBatt2 offers multiple windows, some of which supply the same data as the freeware apps, such as current charge capacity versus the original capacity. A second window supplies the serial number and manufacture date of the battery, as well as “average time to full” data if you’re charging and “average time to empty” data if you’re on battery power. A third window uses data from other users stored online to compare your Mac laptop’s battery to others using the same model. In addition to the raw capacity numbers, iBatt2 assigns your laptop battery a grade. My MacBook’s battery earned only a “C.” The software also charts your battery’s power activities on a graph that updates itself automatically. Finally, iBatt2 has some cool-looking but not terribly useful gauges at the bottom of the screen showing wattage and charge levels.

Posted by David Zeiler at 4:53 AM in MacBook, ~Monday morning Macware (archive) | Permalink | Comments (4)
                       

I have long suspected that Macs had made more headway in capturing market share than the periodic research reports have indicated. Finally, we have a report that explains why.

A Bernstein Research report by Toni Sacconaghi, Jr., which I discovered via Philip Elmer-DeWitt’s Apple 2.0 blog at Fortune, provides some fresh numbers on the Mac, particularly its laptops.

The Bernstein report differs from other market share reports I’ve seen in that it breaks the data into five price “quintiles.” Mac laptops have a whopping 29.4 percent of the top quintile (machines over $1,300) and 9.3 percent of the second. When you drop the two quintiles in which Apple does not compete (the bottom two fall under $1,100), Mac laptops still net a 13.8 percent market share in the U.S. While still a long way off from parity with the Windows competition, these numbers jibe better with real-world observations than the 5 to 6 percent numbers that reflect sales of mountains of cheap PCs to businesses.

One of the charts included in the Bernstein report includes a line that breaks out Apple’s U.S. market share in the highest price category in the education and consumer markets, excluding the corporate market that the company historically has ignored. Mac laptops comprise 45.8 percent of that market. Wow.

While anecdotal proof for the Mac’s increasing popularity has been building for several years, the market share numbers have not reflected what seemed obvious. True, the Mac’s overall market share has doubled since 2004 (from 3.2 percent in the U.S. to 6.7 percent and from 1.8 percent worldwide to 2.9 percent, according to Gartner data), but all those glowing Apple logos on laptops on college campuses, at technical conferences and in public Wi-Fi areas argued for higher numbers.

Apple’s laptop share worldwide has shown a similar pattern. Mac laptops do best in the highest price quintile with 11.2 percent, and have 8.1 percent of the second most expensive one. Mac desktops have 8.1 percent of the top quintile of the global market (but almost nothing in the other four). While these figures are far from dominating, compared to Apple’s scrawny worldwide share overall, they’re startling.

Another surprise in the Bernstein report is that Apple’s surge in the high-priced categories is a relatively recent phenomenon. In 2000, Mac laptops held 3.6 percent of the top quintile in the U.S. and 4 percent of the second. The highest percentage, 6.1 percent, was in the lowest-priced quintile. By 2004, the Mac laptops had risen to 7.6 percent of the top quintile and 7.2 percent of the second. That year Apple had the highest share in the third quintile at 9.7 percent.

Despite what appears to be great news for Apple laptop sales – rapidly increasing market share in the highest-priced, most profitable quintiles -- Sacconaghi’s report points to dark consequences. It views Apple’s rapidly increasing share of the pricey end of the laptop market as a limiting factor to growth in the years ahead, particularly in light of the Mac’s increasing average price versus that of a typical PC laptop.

I had almost forgotten this, but the iBook a few years ago started at $999. The increase in price of the entry-level MacBook to $1,099 combined with the perpetual fall of Windows-based laptops has had the net effect of making Macs more and more expensive relative to their PC counterparts. Sacconaghi theorizes this will narrow the potential market for Mac laptops and pressure Apple to drop the entry-level price back to $999 or lower to perpetuate the rate of growth it has enjoyed over the past two years. Combined with Apple’s determination not to go after the corporate market, further limiting its overall market share growth, I have to concede that Mac laptop sales could hit a wall at some point.

Sacconaghi does not note in his report that Mac laptops, while costlier on average when compared to the entire Windows PC market, are priced about the same as PCs of comparable abilities (Charles Gaba’s System Shootouts site has many examples of this). Apple refuses to make cheap Macs because it wants to maintain its image as a maker of quality computers and because it disdains low-margin hardware. But in doing so, Apple has written off a significant chunk of the PC market.

This could present a problem as Apple’s market share grows, but one of the notable aspects of the company’s recent increases in market share is that they have come despite the higher average selling prices of Macs. Consumers are voting for the Mac with their pocketbooks, and there are no signs yet the trend is slowing.

Even if Sacconaghi’s scenario materializes (he projects sales into 2011), Apple’s generous margins always give it the option of prudent price cuts to goose market share. Case in point: the controversial $200 iPhone price cut resulted in a sustained 56 percent increase in sales, according to Piper Jaffray’s Gene Munster.

But for the near future, I see Apple standing pat. Wall Street should be more than satisfied with the boatload of good news Apple will deliver in its fourth quarter earnings report Oct. 22.

Posted by David Zeiler at 2:18 PM in Mac market share, MacBook | Permalink | Comments (4)
                       

When Apple releases Leopard later this month (we hope), owners of older PowerPC-based Macs will have a tougher-than-usual decision to make.

Unlike new versions of Microsoft’s Windows operating system, which invariably require much more robust hardware to run acceptably than the previous version, every successive version of Mac OS X has actually run faster on existing hardware. Not only did Mac users get whatever cool new features Apple had cooked up, they got a faster Mac too.

Because of this, I have always advised Mac users to run the latest supported version of OS X on their Mac. But Leopard promises to be a cat of a different stripe. In addition to dropping support for certain older Macs, this operating system upgrade might not offer much of a performance improvement for PowerPC-based Macs. In fact, it’s likely such Macs will suffer a performance hit.

Apple has yet to announce Leopard’s system requirements, but the word at AppleInsider is that Macs with CPUs slower than an 867 MHz G4 will not make the cut. That includes not only every G3-based system, but also quite a few G4-based systems. My own 867 MHz 2001 Quicksilver Mac just barely qualifies.

According to AppleInsider, Apple engineers determined that Macs beneath the 867 MHz threshold ran “too slow” with Leopard. Red flag!

I strongly suspect Leopard will run more slowly than Tiger on all PowerPC systems, even supported ones. I say this because common sense dictates that Apple has spent the past two years concentrating on the optimization of OS X for Intel-based systems, since that’s the present and future of the Mac platform.

That’s good news for my Intel-based MacBook, which definitely will be getting the Leopard treatment. But I’m hesitant to put Leopard on the Quicksilver if it’s going to degrade performance in any way and eat up more space on its already overstuffed hard drive. That leaves the dilemma of passing up Apple’s latest and greatest to ensure a Mac that’s running at peak efficiency. Ugh.

From a pragmatic perspective, Apple has no incentive to expend OS development resources on PowerPC Macs, which despite a large installed base are destined to join Mac OS 9 as part of the company’s fondly remembered past. In fact, the AppleInsider piece notes “people familiar with Apple development cycles speculate that Mac OS X 10.6 will exclude support for PowerPC-based Macs entirely.”

This isn’t a crisis, but the arrival of Leopard does represent something of a watershed moment in Apple’s transition to Intel chips. Owners of PowerPC Macs certainly can keep on using Tiger or Panther until they’re ready to upgrade to an Intel Mac. But even if your Mac runs much better under Tiger, it will be awfully tough to avoid those feelings of Leopard envy.

Do you plan to upgrade a G4 Mac that meets Leopard’s requirements? Or will you stick with Tiger until you replace that Mac with an Intel-based machine?

Posted by David Zeiler at 3:55 PM in Mac OS X | Permalink | Comments (27)
                       

Still no actual Beatles albums, but as of today the solo works of all four Beatles can be purchased from the iTunes Store. Nine George Harrison albums have joined the music of Paul McCartney (added in May), John Lennon (added in mid-August) and Ringo Starr (added at the end of August).

This raises hope that the Beatles catalog (or at least a significant chunk of it) will soon follow, perhaps in time for Christmas.

If Apple really wants to make a splash when it does get around to adding the Beatles to iTunes, it could offer a special “Classic” iPod pre-loaded with the full catalog of Beatles songs as it did with the U2 iPod back in 2004.

Posted by David Zeiler at 6:30 PM in iTunes/iTunes Store | Permalink | Comments (1)
                       

If you use archives frequently, a utility called Springy ($18 shareware, Dragan Milic) could make your life a good bit easier. Springy can read, extract and create archives in all the most common Mac OS X formats, including DMG, TAR, ZIP and SIT. It’s a slimmer, well-designed, less expensive alternative to Stuffit Standard ($49.99) and the venerable Stuffit Deluxe ($79.99). Stuffit Expander, which can expand archives but can’t create them, remains free for the download.

One of Springy’s handy features is that it can view what’s in an archive without taking the extra time to extract it. This can be a great time-saver. If you find what you’re looking for, Springy can extract it with a double click. While this will work with any of the archive formats that Springy supports, I found it most useful in working with those disk image (DMG) files so common in OS X.

Creating an archive is almost as easy. Just hit Command-N and a dialog box appears asking you for a name for your new archive, which file format you want to use and where you want to save it. Once created, a column-view window opens. You can add files to the archive simply by dragging and dropping them on the window, just the way Mac users like it.

The ability to avoid extracting all the files when re-opening an archive saves more time when you want to modify an archive by renaming, adding or deleting files.

Perhaps the most compelling feature Springy offers is Contextual menus. During installation you drop a plug-in into the appropriate folder to make Springy available in the Finder at all times, whether the program is running or not. When you right click (or option-click, if you prefer), Springy’s archiving magic appears at the bottom of the menu. Now that’s convenient.

Springy is a Universal binary app, so runs equally well on both PowerPC- and Intel-based Macs. The free trial version has most of the functionality of the paid registered version but the limitations -- primarily that archives cannot be larger than 50 megabytes -- strongly encourage users to pay up.

Posted by David Zeiler at 4:23 AM in ~Monday morning Macware (archive) | Permalink
                       

Apple loyalists have always had a bit of a love-hate relationship with the company, but lately it seems there’s been a lot more hate than love.

Recently we’ve seen users irate over a software update “bricking” their hacked iPhones. Early buyers of iPhones said they felt betrayed and cheated when Apple dropped the price of the device $200 just 10 weeks after many of them stood in line hours to be among the first to own one. Many iPhone owners are unhappy they have to pay Apple twice to use a song from the iTunes Store as a ringtone. They resent being locked in to using AT&T as their cellular service provider. Many have criticized Apple for not allowing third-party software to run on the iPhone. And they fume over the inability to change the device’s battery themselves.

That’s just the iPhone issues. The iTunes-iPod ecosystem has long been criticized as “locking” in customers because the DRM-encoded songs play only on iPods and computers running iTunes software. Class action lawsuits over a wide assortment of alleged Apple transgressions – from all of iPhone issues above to dissatisfaction with laptop screen quality – are filed almost daily.

What happened to the company that induces swooning from both the media and consumers alike? Why so much negativity all of the sudden? What has become of Apple’s reputation as the most consumer-friendly tech company?

To some degree, it’s the “squeaky wheel” syndrome. Not all Apple customers are disgruntled, but a significant number are and they have been very loudly -- and publicly -- making their feelings known.

But Apple’s reputation for arrogance, particularly in dealing with customer complaints, appears to have caught up to it lately. Some of the problems are difficult for Apple to control; for example, the iPhone lock-in with AT&T has more to do with how the cellular industry operates than any desire on Apple’s part to prevent iPhone owners from using other carriers.

Yet as many of these mini-crises have unfolded over the past several months, even the staunchest Apple loyalists must feel that the company could have done more to mitigate or avoid them. Why can’t the iPhone (and iPods) have a user-replaceable battery? Why is Apple so adamant in preventing third-party apps from running on the iPhone? (Although recent speculation theorizes that because the iPhone runs Mac OS X 10.5, Apple is waiting until after Leopard’s official release to open the iPhone up to developers. Fingers crossed.)

Apple does get points for addressing the iPhone price drop controversy quickly with the $100 coupon, though even that failed to satisfy everyone. But in other areas, it seems to turns a deaf ear, often telling customers that their problem isn’t real and even deleting threads discussing controversial complaints from the company’s online forums. For Apple, it’s about trying to control perceptions of the company, but stonewalling and censorship don’t score PR points.

Yet another sticky PR issue lurks around the corner with the impending release of Mac OS X Leopard. Just yesterday I had a colleague in the Sun newsroom express his anger to me over Apple’s lack of a upgrade discount policy for people like him who bought one of the new iMac models introduced in August. Historically, Apple has offered a discount on a new version of OS X only to customers who buy a Mac after an official release date has been announced. (As of today, no date has been announced, though the rumor sites suspect we’ll see Leopard go on sale Friday, Oct. 26.)

While this has been Apple’s policy on OS upgrades for recent Mac buyers for a long time, I can see where people new to the Mac platform would be annoyed, particularly since Leopard was originally slated for a spring release. Were it not for the delay, those new iMacs would have had Leopard pre-installed.

Microsoft, when faced with a similar problem last October – Vista’s release, at one point promised for the fall, was delayed until January – offered buyers of Windows PCs a coupon to upgrade to Vista later. The least Apple could do is extend its $19.95 OS upgrade policy back further than the announce date. Do I hear 90 days? 60? Even 30 days would be an improvement.

On top of that, the until-now free Boot Camp software that allows Windows to boot on an Intel-based Mac will expire with the release of Leopard. The only way to get a working copy will be to buy Leopard for its expected $129.95 selling price. Expect another wave of complaints about Apple’s greed from both long-time Mac users and recently converted “switchers.” Why would Apple not continue to make Boot Camp a free download even after it’s included in OS X? Is the extra money worth alienating even more customers?

Apple’s stellar image as a “hip” company that makes cool products and prides itself on high levels of customer satisfaction is just as vital an asset as its superbly engineered hardware and software. The greatest threat to Apple right now is not its competitors, but its own stubborn, customer-maddening policies. What’s frustrating is that in most cases, Apple could easily rectify matters. More sensitivity to customer concerns and less paternalism would go a long way.

By and large, most Apple loyalists have not yet lost their faith in the company. But from what I’m reading every day on the Web, that faith is wavering.

Posted by David Zeiler at 9:08 PM | Permalink | Comments (24)
                       

The new Zunes are coming! The new Zunes are coming! But will anyone care?

Just weeks after Apple raised the bar with a refreshed lineup of iPods, Microsoft is poised to release a refreshed lineup of Zunes. Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates showed the new Zunes, scheduled to go on sale in mid-November, to reporters yesterday. The original Zune now has an 80-gigabyte version; two new flash memory-based models come in 4 GB and 8 GB versions as well as several new colors, though none of the new Zunes is brown.

Going simply by the specifications and prices, the new Zunes match up closely with their iPod counterparts, the iPod Classic and the iPod Nano. (If you want to see all the details, Engadget has created a chart.) The Zune flashes even have a physical shape much like the old, vertical iPod Nanos. The general impression is that the Zune is trying hard to match the iPod, rather than exceed it; it doesn’t differentiate itself enough to get noticed in a market where the iPod is king.

The new Zunes can “squirt” music to each other, as did the first generation. That feature did not prove to be a particularly strong selling point, perhaps because the songs expire after three plays. The Zunes still have an FM radio receiver, which the iPod does not, but frankly I use my iPod to avoid listening to the radio. And the new Zunes can sync their music from Windows PCs wirelessly, which is great if you hate the dreadful inconvenience of having to connect your unit into a USB port.

That’s not going to be enough to lure consumers from the iPod. As Gartner vice president Van Baker told the Los Angeles Times, “They’re not going to gain against Apple because there is nothing really innovative about what they’re doing.”

Microsoft has said it sold 1.2 million Zunes in the first half of 2007. Apple sold 20.35 million iPods in the same period. That ratio almost certainly will not change in the upcoming holiday shopping season. Microsoft needed to do something a lot more dramatic with the Zune to have any hope of eating significantly into the iPod’s 70 percent-plus market share.

Even Bill Gates seems unimpressed. “For something we pulled together in six months, we are very pleased with the satisfaction we got,” Gates told the New York Times. “The satisfaction for the device was superhigh. The satisfaction on the software actually is where we’d expect to see a huge uptick this year. It was just so-so on the software side.” Commenting on the integration of Zune’s hardware, software and music store, Gates added, “I’m sure a year from now we’ll do even better. But I’m blown away by what they’ve been able to do in a year.”

Uh, way to give Zune the hard sell, Bill. In years past, Gates famously touted new versions of Windows as the most robust ever, most secure ever, most feature-rich ever, blah, blah, blah. The hyperbole was staggering, and often misplaced. But it was his job as head of the company and chief figurehead to sell the product. Heaven knows Steve Jobs is legendary for marketing Apple’s new wares, though he usually has the goods to back up his claims.

As it stands, the new Zunes don’t figure to dampen Apple’s holiday cheer, while the increasingly negative reaction to Vista should help boost already rising Mac sales in the final quarter of 2006.

Posted by David Zeiler at 3:48 PM in Taunting Microsoft, iPod | Permalink | Comments (9)
                       

Few topics in the Mac universe engender more confusion than market share numbers. The almost infinite ways to measure market share – who’s buying, where they’re buying (Internet vs. brick and mortar), laptops vs. desktops, aggregate metrics from Web sites, raw sales data from all the PC manufacturers – make any accurate assessment almost impossible.

So I was amused yesterday when many Mac Web sites celebrated the latest numbers from California-based Net Applications, which each month measures market share of Web browsers and operating systems. The company’s September data shows Mac OS Web traffic at 6.61 percent (a combination of 3.38 percent for PowerPC-based Macs and 3.23 for Intel-based Macs). Everyone seemed pleased that the Mac OS share had risen almost a half a percentage point from 6.15 percent in August and more than a point from 5.21 percent last October.

But if you look at the data for each month over the past year, the achievement looks less impressive. The Mac OS had a combined share of 6.22 per percent as early as January. It has hovered between 5.97 percent (July) and 6.46 percent (May) all through 2007. Perhaps the best thing that can be said for the September number is that it is the highest so far this year, but by a statistically insignificant amount.

The numbers for Safari, Apple’s Web browser, are similar. Safari’s share edged up to 5.07 percent from 4.68 percent in August. Last October Safari had just a 3.93 percent share of Web surfers. But Safari had 4.85 percent in February and 4.82 percent in May so September’s jump, while the highest of 2007, does not represent a significant gain in market share for Safari.

Earlier today an outfit called W3Counter released comparable statistics showing the Mac OS representing a mere 3.77 percent of Web traffic. That’s unchanged from W3Counter’s August number, and a slight drop from the 3.91 percent the Mac OS recorded in May. In the browser category, Safari had a lowly1.77 percent share.

Why the discrepancy? Apparently the two companies are measuring traffic on different Web sites, though nether gives a lot of details on which sites they measure. Since both are in the business of supplying traffic data to customers, one assumes the statistics come from each company’s respective roster of clients. If true, that’s not a scientifically reliable way to sample market share of operating systems and browsers.

For its part, W3Counter provides evidence that their data is skewed toward the unreliable. The nation category shows tiny Latvia as the country generating the fourth-most Web traffic, ahead of Canada, the Philippines, France and Australia.

Taken individually, no data on Mac market share can offer definitive evidence of the platform’s progress against Windows. Nevertheless, most surveys and reports released over the past year or so have shown the Mac making headway, albeit slowly.

We’re unlikely to see any sudden, dramatic surges in Mac market share over the next year or two – Apple’s disinterest in pursuing the enterprise (business) market precludes any large gains -- but expect to see gradual growth as more and more consumers look to the Mac as a viable alternative to Windows.

What would be really interesting is a survey showing how the Mac’s market share has increased among consumers, omitting all those Dells in the workplace. Any takers?

Posted by David Zeiler at 3:27 PM in Mac market share | Permalink | Comments (3)
                       

Back in August I wrote about two pieces of software (FruitMenu and XMenu) that restored the ability to customize the OS X Apple Menu as one could under Mac OS 9. Today I present two more options to restore OS 9 functionality in Mac OS X, both freeware.

The first, TigerLaunch, is a very simple app created in Apple’s Cocoa programming language by Ranchero Software. When you start TigerLaunch it creates an extra icon in the Menu bar, just like XMenu. However, TigerLaunch has a more “aquified” OS X look and feel. TigerLaunch searches your Mac for apps and generates a complete list of them – regardless of the folder in which they reside. XMenu only takes the apps that actually reside in the Mac’s Applications Folder. But TigerLaunch only lists programs, while Xmenu creates separate menus for Applications, Documents, Home and more.

Of course, if you collect a lot of small apps and utilities like I do, the menu Tiger Launch creates is absurdly long. Not to worry, though; clicking on the “Configure” option brings up the menu list with a checkbox beside each app name. Unchecking the boxes prevents those apps from appearing in the menu. A tedious task, but it really trims the menu to a manageable size and only need be done once.

TigerLaunch must be re-launched every time you reboot or log out of your Mac, but can be added to the Startup Items to force it to launch automatically. That’s all there is to TigerLaunch, but if you’re looking for a basic, free solution to your overloaded Dock and pine for an OS 9-style Apple Menu, it’s worth a look. (FruitMenu remains by far a superior solution, but does cost $10 and is a “haxie” – it alters your system software.)

Today’s second option, RapidoStart by app4Mac, re-invents another Mac OS 9 legacy – the Launcher. This utility creates gray transparent windows full of large icons arranged as the user chooses. Visually it resembles the application switcher function built into OS X (Command-Tab). By default RapidoStart is activated by a green button it creates in the lower right corner of your screen, but in the preferences you can move the button to any corner. Power users will prefer assigning it to an F-key, such as F1, so that hitting that key instantly brings up the RapidoStart window.

RapidoStart is delightfully customizable. The default window holds 8 Application icons, but can be changed to 16, 32 or 48 if your screen is big enough. You add app icons by dragging and dropping them. You can rearrange them in any order at any time, and delete icons by using the right-click menu (or option-click for those Mac die-hards with a single-button mouse).

If you need more room for icons or just want a better way to organize your stuff, you can create more windows and name them whatever you like: Games, Documents, whatever. After you set up more than one category, you can switch between them by clicking on arrows located at the top left of the RapidoStart window. If you end up with so many categories and icons that navigation gets tricky, RapidoStart provides an iTunes-like search window to help you find the icon you’re seeking.

In the preferences is a convenient option to Launch at Startup, which any regular user of this utility would want.

For freeware, RapidoStart is remarkably polished. It may be the most unobtrusive means of relieving the Dock of some of its burden I’ve seen yet.

Posted by David Zeiler at 4:55 AM in ~Monday morning Macware (archive) | Permalink