Apple's new Snow Leopard - Mac OS X 10.6 - finally hit the stores August 28! With the authorized retailers having kicked off the sale of the upgrade, most customers who, earlier this week, pre-ordered copies of the OS received the upgrade on the launch day itself.

However, the usual frenzy accompanying the launch of a new Apple product was clearly missing in most places - quite unlike the 2007 launch of the Leopard and the last summer launch of the iPhone 3G, there were no long, meandering queues and no large crowds outside the stores!

Saying that the Snow Leopard sales on the first day were pretty "brisk," a salesperson at Apple's flagship Fifth Avenue store in New York City, added that there were no queues outside the store. The spokesman said: "You can just come right in!"

Analysts estimate a sale of between 2.5 million and 3 million copies of the newly-released Snow Leopard for the quarter that ends September 30 - a striking contrast to the momentous 2 million copies of its predecessor, the Leopard, Mac OS X 10.5, sold in the first weekend!

Meanwhile, Apple has started posting the support documents of the Snow Leopard to its Web site - while one set of docs detail installation problems, others pertain to questions about Boot Camp, the utility that facilitates the running of Microsoft Windows on the Macs.