Remember when I told you guys of my experience at Apple Store Ginza in Tokyo a few weeks back? I was thinking during that rainy Friday afternoon for the Leopard launch that it was a bit disconcerting in that I was expecting the line I was in to be long , but not that long (almost 5 blocks!).

Wandering around Tokyo days before, I was already a bit surprised at the ubiquity of Macs, which was more than I was accustomed to in my home base of Manila. They were nearly everywhere I happened to be, and in the big press rooms of the Tokyo Motorshow I attended, nearly half of the journalists were tapping away at Powerbooks, Macbooks and Macbook Pros and iMacs in there.

Well, it seems to not just be a prevalent trend or fad.

Reports have it that Leopard is now the leading OS in Japan with the release of OS X 10.5. The amazing statistic is that Mac OS purchases went up over 60% for October, from 15% percent, which is nothing short of phenomenal. This figure topples Microsoft from the top spot for the first time.

In fact, Microsoft is on the opposite side of the slope, with sales plunging from 75.3% to 28.8% Phenomenal too - in the worst way.

In the six days following the Oct.26 release of Leopard, the new Apple OS now holds the lion’s share (so to speak) with 53.9% of the entire OS-only market. Hoo! Go Japan!

Arigato gozaimasu!

(If you didn’t catch it, read my story of Leopard Day in Japan here.)

Mac-A-Doodle would like to greet the online Apple Store a Happy 10th Birthday this month. It opened November 1997, and was selling Mac OS 8, G3 Macs, Newtons and eMates. It was followed by the UK store five months later, then in rapid succession Sweden, Belgium, Holland, Spain, and Italy. In 1999 the Japanese, Austrian and Swiss stores came out, and the rest is history.

Aside from spectacular worldwide sales, it holds the distinction of being the only online store that creates instant, planet-wide speculative frenzy whenever it goes offline.

Thanks for the purchases!

1997:

2007:

Honestly, I would have been shocked it if wasn’t.

Time Magazine has declared the iPhone the ‘Invention of The Year‘ for 07. Writer Lev Grossman says in the mag’s website that despite the hype, the problems and the criticism, “Apple’s iPhone is still the best thing invented this year. ”

Grossman lists five things that make Apple’s iPhone THE gadget of the year:

1. The iPhone is pretty.
2. It’s touchy-feely.
3. It will make other phones better.
4. It’s not a phone, it’s a platform.
5. It is but the ghost of iPhones yet to come.

Grossman elaborates and explains these points and more in his piece, available online here.

As of Monday, Apple Inc.’s capitalization was put at US$186 billion - putting it ahead of IBM which is valued at US$156.45 billion. This rise came as Apple shares peaked at US$186.

We’d like to take this time to say hello once more to Mr. Michael Dell, of Dell Computers, who seems will never ever live his 1997 statement down.

Via Wired.

I have fond memories of Sherlock, Apple’s old and venerable search utility. He has saved me in many a time of need, and has himself survived many an OS update. But it seems he has finally outlived his usefulness, eclipsed by the upstart 21st century detective Spotlight, who has come into his own with Leopard. The King is dead! Long live the King!

With the introduction of the new OS, Sherlock seems to have completely and totally disappeared, spirited away into the ether unceremoniously, without fuss or French horns, although there hasn’t really been any official announcement one way or the other.

Never mind a clean install; if you upgrade from Tiger to Leopard, Sherlock is simply erased from your system. Searching for him on the Apple site leads nowhere; he’s just vanished from sight, erased from memory. Sniff.

A moment of silence, please, for our dear, good, dependable friend Sherlock. May flights of angels sing thee to thy rest…