It's often said that a leopard cannot change its spots, but is the new Leopard operating system helping Apple change the PC industry?

Two recent ChangeWave surveys provide new insight on Leopard's industry impact, along with a close look at consumer and corporate PC demand for 1st Quarter 2008....

Apple computer sales continue to show extraordinary momentum for the holidays, according to our latest PC buying survey of 3,872 consumers (Oct 29 – Nov 5).

Not only do new Mac buyers report sky high satisfaction with their desktops and laptops, but planned Apple purchases for the next 90 days also look exceptionally robust.....

Tellingly, one-in-four respondents (24%) say that the release of Apple's new Leopard operating system has made them more likely to buy a Mac in the future.

Apple's Macintosh computers are poised to make sizable market share gains in the coming months, according to a research firm that tracks PC purchase intent.

ChangeWave Research... recently conducted two surveys that gauged PC-buying plans over the next 90 days - a period running from the holiday shopping season into first-quarter 2008. It polled members of its alliance, which includes technology and business executives with leading companies in select industries. Its members tend to be more tech-savvy and have higher disposable incomes than the general public....

The latest ChangeWave consumer poll found that 29% of likely notebook and desktop PC buyers in the next 90 days are planning to get a Mac. That's higher than consumer purchase intent for HP laptops (21%), HP desktops (24%) and Dell laptops (28%). But Dell had higher demand for its desktops (31%).....

Computers remain the main driver of Apple's business. Mac product sales accounted for 62% of Apple's revenue in its fiscal fourth quarter ended Sept. 29. It also brings in the lion's share of the profit.

According to a recent study by research firm ChangeWave, Apple's Macintosh line of computers is well on its way to gaining a sizable portion of the computing market in the coming months.

Polling customers about their computer buying preferences over the next 90 days, ChangeWave found that 29 percent of respondents claimed they would be buying a Mac over that period, while 24 percent will buy HP desktops and 31 percent will buy Dell desktops.

Amazingly, just two years ago, only 16 percent of respondents indicated that they would plan on buying a Mac notebook, while 11 percent claimed they would buy a Mac desktop.

But perhaps most important, Tobin Smith, founder of ChangeWave pointed out that, "these are not just the Mac-heads who are buying." And most consumers (24 percent) are choosing Macs because of Leopard and their distaste for Vista....

I firmly believe an increase in Apple market share is not just good for Apple, it's good for all consumers too....

Should CIOs forget the past and jump on the Apple bandwagon? Not just yet. That's because IBM's vision of computing is much closer to business reality than Apple's is. IT problems are complex. For every IT question, Apple has one simple answer: the Mac. IBM, on the other hand, doesn't have a pat answer, because it knows each company's IT conundrums will be solved differently.

In late October, a buddy from my MacWeek days e-mailed me with this half-joking dig: "Apple's worth more than IBM. The Mac wins!!"

To Mac fans, it was a vindication of Apple's approach to computing . Apple strives to make things simple for end users. IBM seems to savor IT complexity, always underscoring how hard technology is to use.

Learn which versions of Mac OS X come with Intel-based Macs. Important: Do not use a Mac OS version earlier than the one included with the computer.

If you have a PowerPC-based Mac, see below.

Learn the version(s) of Mac OS included with PowerPC Macs produced since 01 Jan 1998. If you're looking for information about Intel Macs produced since 2006, see this article.

Important: You cannot normally use a Mac OS version earlier than the one included with the computer....

Some computers may include a slightly newer build (but same numbered version) of Mac OS X on the Install or Restore discs than was preinstalled on the hard drive. This is normal.

Some versions of computer-specific software can only be used for NetBoot or System Images for the computer model with which they were bundled. This includes these Power Mac G5 computer-specific builds: 6S74, 6S75, 6S80, 6S90.

Mac users were certainly in a hurry this time. Two million copies of the new Mac OS X Leopard operating system flew off store shelves in the first weekend it was sold.

Drawn in by over 300 new functions, long-time Apple users showed up in particularly large numbers to snap up the sixth version of the Mac OS X system.

Leopard is also intended to show some claws to the PC operating system Windows. Harry McCracken from the online magazine Slate even called the product "Apple's Microsoft-Devouring Jungle Cat."

Anyone who has upgraded to Apple's new version of OSX, Leopard, knows that one of its more obvious features is an invisible, automatic, built-in backup.

Time Machine is built on technologies Apple has borrowed from enterprise IT

As long as a Mac running Leopard is periodically connected to an external drive, the operating system will capture and preserve copies of your data at different points in time.

This feature, Time Machine, has several notable aspects.

Apple's focus on a slick user experience led it to design a very simple, intuitive interface for retrieving lost files using a set-and-forget model.

I recently "kluged" a battery (two actually) for an old PowerBook 190CS. I tore apart the old battery case and stuffed it with 12 AA NiMH batteries I bought at a local CVS pharmacy. I included the old overheating sensors, etc. I also had to build up a replacement PRAM battery (that center-tapped 6V lithium rechargeable) with four AAA NiMH cells in a case (the PRAM apparently doesn't care about the difference between 5.4 and 6 volts). It hangs on the side of the battery slide. (Actually I found that 8 of the original slightly oversize AA NiMH were still okay and rechargeable.)

The machine operates pretty well; however, it has to be kept plugged into the AC adapter. The batteries tend to self discharge and won't start up the system if I leave it unplugged for more than a day or so - even when shut down. The sleep mode works okay....

I used to be (still am, actually) in charge of the Prescott, Arizona Macintosh User Group recycling project, so I saw a lot of older Macs come through, and we usually got them working again. We gave them to organizations like Big Brother/Sister and individuals that needed them.

Most were easy to work on. A Performa 6400 with a TV tuner made a great TV/cable set, among other things. I still use a Power Mac 6100/60 AV as a monitor for a VHS recorder. A couple models were a real pain (the 6500 and 8500 come to mind - you have to disconnect mother board cables to even expand memory; they ended up at the computer abbatoire).

Apple plans major expansion of its international chain of retail stores.

The company plans 40 new outlets in the current financial year, including shops in Brazil and Mexico, as well as the Chinese shop the company has already confirmed, reports AppleInsider.

New Nobel laureate Doris Lessing has used her acceptance speech to rail against the internet, saying it has "seduced a whole generation into its inanities" and created a world where people know nothing.

Lessing, 88, who won this year's Nobel Prize for Literature, lamented the apparent discrepancy in the hunger for books between developing countries like Zimbabwe and the rest of the world.

In August, Elton John, another creative type for whom the internet has opened up a sea of fresh competition, lambasted the web for stifling creativity, even calling for it to be shut down.

"We are in a fragmenting culture, where our certainties of even a few decades ago are questioned and where it is common for young men and women, who have had years of education, to know nothing of the world, to have read nothing, knowing only some speciality or other, for instance, computers," she said in the speech read out by Lessing's British publisher as she was too ill to travel to Sweden for the Nobel festivities....

Similarly, author Andrew Keen argued in his new book, The Cult of the Amateur, that the internet was killing culture and assaulting economics.

"Both Advanced Micro Devices and Intel have begun forming groups and hiring expertise in system-on-chip designs, looking ahead toward a future where graphics and computing are combined."

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