Apple on Monday announced that the latest iteration of its Mac operating system, OS X Mountain Lion, is the company's most successful ever. Apple is reporting more than 3 million downloads from its Mac App Store in the first four days.

News reports are now pegging that total at 4 million as of Monday, though Apple has not released official stats.

The ninth major release of the Mac desktop OS, Mountain Lion offers more than 200 new features. Consumers are downloading it by the millions from the Mac App Store as an upgrade to Lion or Snow Leopard for $19.99.

$38 Million in Three Days

Mountain Lion features include an all new Messages app, Notification Center, system-wide Sharing, Facebook integration, Dictation, AirPlay Mirroring and Game Center.

Meanwhile, Apple said iCloud integration makes it easy for consumers to set up features like Mail, Contacts, Calendar, Messages, Reminders and Notes, and keep everything, including iWork documents, up to date across the desktop, laptop, iPhone and iPad.

Chitika is reporting that new software accounted for 2 percent of Mac traffic globally in the first two days after Mountain Lion hit the market. The firm said consumers who skipped the upgrade to Lion, which had mixed reviews, may be more inclined to make the jump to Mountain Lion.

Chitika is estimating 2.1 million Mac owners have upgraded to the new operating system. That equals about $38 million in revenue if just 90 percent of those users paid for the operating system.

"It is rather impressive for an operating system to capture 3.2% of market Web usage after just 48 hours on the market," Chitika said. "Such figures are likely supported by a relatively low price point for the operating system as well as an expansive list of desired feature improvements."

The Tim Cook Effect

We caught up with Rob Enderle, principal analyst at the Enderle Group, to get his take on Apple's market stance. Apple missed its earnings last week and posted a success right after. But Enderle told us things might have been different if the late Apple CEO Steve Jobs were still at the helm.

"The last earnings report showcased the difference between the two executives," Enderle said. "Tim Cook was not hired to be a Steve Jobs. He was hired to do all the jobs that Steve didn't want to do. So he's almost the polar opposite. Assuming that Apple is going to continue on an even keel, appointing Cook was kind of silly.

"In every major area Cook is very different. He delegates. He's not a micromanager. He's process-oriented. He's not project-oriented. He probably couldn't spell marketing on a good day. Jobs was all about marketing. Cook is a much stronger engineer and Jobs played one on TV. There are huge differences between the two guys."

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