Where's the Line Outside the Apple Store?

With the clock ticking down toward Apple's unveiling of the Leopard OS X software upgrade, the Apple store on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan was buzzing with anticipation this afternoon.

Leopard was already installed on the store's Macs, and dozens of Apple fanatics were trying out the new software. Retail managers said that they would close the store at 4 p.m., in order to "prepare," and then open again at 6 p.m. Apple staffers will be doing Leopard demos all night long.

There was no line at 1:30 p.m., but retail managers said they expected hardcore Apple fanatics to begin assembling later in the afternoon.

Initial reviews of Leopard have been quite positive.

The Wall Street Journal's Walt Mossberg wrote of Leopard that "while it is an evolutionary, not a revolutionary, release, I believe it builds on Apple's quality advantage over Windows. In my view, Leopard is better and faster than Vista, with a set of new features that make Macs even easier to use."

There has been a lot of discussion about what is driving the increase in Mac sales, which helped push Apple to a blowout earnings report last week. Apple's U.S. computer market share has grown to 8.1 percent, up 37 percent from a year ago, according to Gartner.

Some have pointed to the so-called halo effect, which holds that strong sales of iPods and iPhones bring Windows users into the fold. Others have suggested that the ability to run Microsoft Windows is driving the increase in Mac sales.

There is a third idea on what is driving the increase in Mac sales, and it goes a little something like this: Apple makes excellent products.

Pundits can search high and low for some arcane reason driving the increase in sales, but the simple fact is that more people are buying Macs because they are great products, running great software—and they're getting better all the time.

Think of this theory as the Occam's Razor of the tech world.

In the New York Times, David Pogue writes that "Leopard is powerful, polished and carefully conceived. Happy surprises, and very few disappointments, lie around every corner. This Leopard has more than 300 new spots—and most of them are bright ones."

Clearly, Pogue did not get the memo about eschewing feline metaphors, but ... he's David Pogue, so what are you going to do?

by Sam Gustin