Apple’s sales of Leopard top 2 million

Apple Inc. sold more than 2 million copies of its Leopard software in the first weekend on sale, outpacing early orders for the prior version of its Macintosh computer operating system.

Leopard, released Oct. 26, includes features for organizing and sharing files and software that lets Mac users run Microsoft Corp.’s rival Windows operating system. Leopard is $129 for a single copy and $199 for a family pack with five licenses.

The software could add as much as $258 million to Apple’s sales this quarter, Bank of America analyst Scott Craig said. It took Apple more than a month to sell 2 million copies of the previous edition, called Tiger, after the April 2005 release, he said. Leopard is the sixth major version of Apple’s OS X software, which first went on sale in March 2001.