With the pre-release sales taken out of the equation, however, year-to-year sales of Windows desktop versions were just about the same for the two quarters, showing no real improvement in the three months that ended on March 31, despite Microsoft's introduction of a major new edition of its desktop OS. Yet as one big indicator that a lot of users are still sticking with Windows XP, Lenovo and Hewlett-Packard have now joined Dell in offering customers "downgrade" licenses for pre-installing XP, for use after Microsoft's stated XP sales cutoff date. The downgrade licenses will take advantage of a licensing loophole in Vista Ultimate and Vista Business that allow customers to buy XP under a Vista wrapper, so that Microsoft can count the sales as Vista rather than XP licenses. Meanwhile, after its own most recent quarter, Apple announced sales of 2.29 million Macs during the quarter, representing a 51% growth rate over the same period the previous year.