Mac OS X Users Top 7 Million and Applications Double to More Than 6,000

Apple today announced that there are over seven million active users of Mac OS X, the world's most advanced operating system, and that the number of Mac OS X applications has doubled to more than 6,000 during the past year, including the recently-launched QuarkXPress 6, Photoshop 7, Acrobat 6, Director MX, QuickBooks Pro 5.0, Maya 5 and MATLAB.

“With four major Mac OS X releases over the past four years, nothing comesclose to the rapid rate of innovation that Mac OS X is delivering to ourdevelopers”, said Philip Schiller, Apple's senior vice president ofWorldwide Product Marketing. “With Mac OS X, Apple is far outpacing anyother operating system developer in the industry, leap-frogging thecompetition while they're hoping to deliver years in the future what wealready have today”.

Apple today also introduced powerful new application development toolscalled Xcode to enable developers to deliver the next generation of greatMac OS X applications to their customers.

“Starting several years ago with Final Cut Pro 1.2, we've used Mac systems to cut over 30 feature films for Showtime, and last year we started moving our operations to Mac OS X”, said Tim King, president of iPostini. “The stability and the improved workflow for high-end video on Mac OS X was the best reason for us to begin the move and with the release of Final Cut Pro4, we have all of our edit suites on Mac OS X”.

“For technology to be a helpful tool in the classroom, teachers need totrust that it will work when they need it. Teachers know they can count ontheir Macs working. That is what is most important. All of the incrediblemultimedia features such as the ability to easily integrate digital videointo the classroom are an added bonus”, said Steve Carlson, associatesuperintendent for Information and Technology, Beaverton Public Schools inBeaverton Oregon. “That's why this summer we are bringing 8,000 of our10,000 Macs to Mac OS X”.

“Mac OS X is emerging as the premiere UNIX-based scientific workstationplatform, running the UNIX tools we need and handling all standardproductivity applications as a bonus”, said Michael Giddings, professor ofMicrobiology/Immunology and Biomedical Engineering at The University ofNorth Carolina-Chapel Hill. “Mac OS X systems interoperate flawlessly in our mixed computing environment, allowing us to get more out of our systems andspend less time keeping them running or having to write specific driversthan we did with Linux. We now run our genome and proteome analysis projectsexclusively on Mac”.

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