Nobody ever said Apple Mac users were a patient lot. But the waiting is over for the Leopard operating system – and judging by ChangeWave's latest consumer survey, Mac buyers found it well worth the wait.

To gauge the initial reaction to Leopard and to take a fresh look at the ongoing slugfest between Apple, Dell and Hewlett-Packard, we surveyed ChangeWave Alliance consumers the week of January 2-8. A total of 4,604 participated.

Here's what we found:

Apple Mac Sales Skyrocket
Past 90 Days: Consumer sales of Apple laptops (17%; up 3-pts) and desktops (16%; up 6-pts) took an astonishing leap over the holidays....

"Apple Mac users are more likely to be open minded and liberal than the rest of the population, according to research conducted in the run-up to the Macworld Expo in San Francisco this week....

The study of 7,500 respondents, also revealed that people who buy Macs are " less modest, and more assured of their own superiority than the population at large." Quelle surprise!

Tanya Andersen, a single mother and unlikely file-sharers' champion for hoisting the RIAA by its own petard, has scored another victory.

A US District Court judge in Oregon affirmed an earlier decision to award Andersen attorneys' fees for the two-and-a-half year legal pursuit by the Recording Ass. of America, that ultimately ended in dismissal. The latest poop on Andersen was spotted by hawk-like focus of Recording Industry vs The People.

Well, as predicted last week, MacWorld wasn't quite as earthshaking as the last few -- and just as predictably, Wall Street lightly slapped the company for not being able to change the world once a year.

That noted, it has been lost on most people in tech that despite not coming up with the iPhone or iPod this year, Apple's announcements -- including downloadable movies and the superthin MacBook Air laptop computer - are still better than just about anything being introduced by any other company in the electronics world. And of the few that have come up with sexy products recently - Dell, LG and Nintendo - none have managed to do so in more than one business.

So, you have to ask yourself: Why aren't more companies as innovative as Apple? After all, it's not as if Apple engineers are superhuman. I live just down the street, have them as neighbors, eat at the same restaurants - and trust me, they are no different from any of the other engineers around Silicon Valley.

Although you can run Windows applications on Apple's Leopard anyway, many vendors at Macworld are debuting Mac OS editions of products originally designed for Windows.

This, in spite of the vaunted Windows/Mac cross-platform capabilities of Apple's new Leopard operating system. And regardless of Mac fans' claims of relative security versus Windows, some of the new products for Mac OS are geared toward virus protection and Web filtering.

"Actively engage with the Apple community, give Apple credit for what they get right, and point out where they get things wrong while educating Mac users. This hopefully gains me enough credibility that they can't simply dismiss me as anti-Apple and I can help the Mac community pressure Apple for needed change."

Good luck with that, Rich. The problem with talking to the Apple community at large is that there's far too many people - usually, ironically, people who haven't used the Mac for more than a handful of years - who believe that the fact that "there is no malware for the Mac" means it must be perfectly secure.

Acer, the Taiwanese computer manufacturer that acquired Gateway Inc. last year, has as a result overtaken Apple in both U.S. and worldwide computer sales, according to preliminary reports issued Wednesday by Gartner and IDC.

Although the two market research firms show Apple's domestic computer sales in the Christmas quarter up roughly 30 percent from last year — outpacing the industry average by better than 3 to 1 — Apple's share of the market actually fell during those three months. According to Gartner, the Mac now has 6.1 percent of the U.S. market; according to IDC it's 5.7 percent. That puts Apple in 4th place behind Dell, HP and Acer in U.S. personal computer sales.

Towards the end of 2007, many of you read my plea to the community to keep the flame of the Classic Mac OS alive by creating a modern web browser. You'll also take note that I mentioned iCab as the only browser still currently being developed for the Classic Mac OS.

It appears that has come to an end with the latest release of iCab, which is version 4.0. iCab 4.0 is Universal Binary, and it no longer supports the Classic Mac OS - or versions of OS X earlier than 10.3.9.

Pound another nail in the coffin for our beloved OS.

Review Originally known as the '$100 laptop' from the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) project, the XO laptop is now available through retail. I bought one under the Give One, Get One program where for a $400 donation, OLPC would send one XO to the donator, and another to a child. This is my story of working with it for a couple of weeks.

For the second time since October, a sub-$200 fully equipped Linux desktop PC is available for sale to U.S. consumers.

Starting today, Sears.com is selling a Mirus Innovations Inc. desktop machine that runs Linux from Linspire Inc. for $299, minus a $100 mail-in rebate, Linspire said in a statement. Another $15 discount is available through this Saturday, for a final price of $184.99. Shipping is an additional $16.50.

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