Let’s not overlook this gift to Mac users from Apple:

$29 upgrade from Leopard to Snow Leopard and $49 for the Family Pack. I was bracing to pay much more.

With September as the scheduled release date, Apple has several weeks to continue developing the product and perhaps add a few differentiating changes to the look of the new release.

Contrast this low cost of admission with the anticipated cost of Windows 7, which is appearing to be little more than a Vista upgrade with few of the major efficiency and performance enhancements that have been promised since before XP came to market.

I see this as a real coup. By dropping the upgrade price to $29 and releasing it in September, anyone purchasing a new Mac for school is guaranteed a low-cost or even no-cost (under the Apple up-to-date program) upgrade to Snow Leopard.

The positive impact of this pricing is that it won’t skew demand for Macs ahead of the introduction of Snow Leopard by those postponing a purchase based on a release date of an upgrade that might cost $99.

Where does this leave Windows 7? Doing a lot of explaining and watching another back-to-school season slip away.

So much for MS’ claimed “Apple Tax.”  Clearly, this is a “in your face Microsoft.”  Not only is Snow Leopard truly a state of the art OS it’s far less money to boot.

I have read the press release on Snow Leopard and it seems like it’s mostly just an update. I wouldn’t spend more than 29 buck to upgrade, let alone 129.00… about the best it offers is that it seems to make your Apple apps faster. This may be useful to some, but I don’t know how much faster I need my email app to open.

Between the new iPhone and Snow Leopard, I am underwhelmed, although I am sure Apple is not worried about my disappointment.

My hope is that they are secretly working on something game changing again.

litespeed - 09 June 2009 11:58 PM

I have read the press release on Snow Leopard and it seems like it’s mostly just an update. I wouldn’t spend more than 29 buck to upgrade, let alone 129.00… about the best it offers is that it seems to make your Apple apps faster. This may be useful to some, but I don’t know how much faster I need my email app to open.

Between the new iPhone and Snow Leopard, I am underwhelmed, although I am sure Apple is not worried about my disappointment.

My hope is that they are secretly working on something game changing again.

Look a bit further and deeper. For owners of Wintel Macs with independent graphics CPUs, it considerably improves performance while reducing the memory footprint of the entire OS and provides developers with the resources to exploit multi-core processors. Further, it’s another big step forward in the migration to 64-bit computing on Intel chips. For those of us who do design work it’s a noticeable performance boost. For developers it opens new avenues to increase performance and exploit the Intel multi-core chips.

What does Windows 7 offer at a substantially higher cost?

DawnTreader - 10 June 2009 12:09 AM

litespeed - 09 June 2009 11:58 PM

I have read the press release on Snow Leopard and it seems like it’s mostly just an update. I wouldn’t spend more than 29 buck to upgrade, let alone 129.00… about the best it offers is that it seems to make your Apple apps faster. This may be useful to some, but I don’t know how much faster I need my email app to open.

Between the new iPhone and Snow Leopard, I am underwhelmed, although I am sure Apple is not worried about my disappointment.

My hope is that they are secretly working on something game changing again.

Look a bit further and deeper. For owners of Wintel Macs with independent graphics CPUs, it considerably improves performance while reducing the memory footprint of the entire OS and provides developers with the resources to exploit multi-core processors. Further, it’s another big step forward in the migration to 64-bit computing on Intel chips. For those of us who do design work it’s a noticeable performance boost. For developers it opens new avenues to increase performance and exploit the Intel multi-core chips.

What does Windows 7 offer at a substantially higher cost?

Yes, DT, it’s faster for all of you who need more speed for your apps. My point is it’s not so different from Leopard that the average person would probably be willing to spend 129.00 on it so 29.00 seems to be a fair price point. Sort of like someone who has a 3g iphone who probably won’t spend 599.00 to upgrade because it’s basically the same phone. The 3.0 software is the best thing Apple has announced since the app store. Everything else is a re-hash of old technology. Just a little faster. Not that there is anything wrong with that. Faster is important to some people. But it doesn’t make most people drool and stand in line for 12 hours just to get their hands on it.

And from what I read, Windows 7 offers all of those people who hated and feared Vista an opportunity to move into the 21st century. For whatever reason, not everyone wants a mac.

Speed alone is worth the cost of upgrade.  Is way cheaper than upgrading to a faster hardware.  To enjoy snow leopard, I would need to replace my G4 PowerBook   with a MacBook Pro.

We’re brought up to pay for features.  That’s why manufacturers always bring out new models that have “new” features, regardless of whether those features are useful, sometimes making a product very hard to use.  Apple is thinking different here.

AFAIK this is t he first time than an Apple OS update hasn’t been compatible (apart from limited individual components) with every Mac bought new during the previous five years. That breach of policy may be the reason why Apple is de-emphasising new features. It’ll be more than another year before the last PPC Mac sold is five years old (17 inch powerbook?). That’s a good part of the reason why there are few features, and it’s still called Leopard. Apple are effectively positioning it as an Intel-only “service pack” in order not to upset old-timers still on PowerPC.

I think the technical press are painting Snow Leopard as Windows Vista. It is SO easy to say “no new features” when in fact the OS has been completely reengineered from the ground up. This is important. Very important. While Windows 7 continues to add features to an old way of doing things Apple have stripped out the cruft and moved on.

rattyuk - 10 June 2009 04:02 AM

I think the technical press are painting Snow Leopard as Windows Vista. It is SO easy to say “no new features” when in fact the OS has been completely reengineered from the ground up. This is important. Very important. While Windows 7 continues to add features to an old way of doing things Apple have stripped out the cruft and moved on.

True.  It’s never a good idea to compare Apples with Lemons (oh…wait…that’s not the analogy, is it? )

DawnTreader - 10 June 2009 12:09 AM

litespeed - 09 June 2009 11:58 PM

I have read the press release on Snow Leopard and it seems like it’s mostly just an update… but I don’t know how much faster I need my email app to open.

...For owners of Wintel Macs with independent graphics CPUs, it considerably improves performance while reducing the memory footprint of the entire OS and provides developers with the resources to exploit multi-core processors. Further, it’s another big step forward in the migration to 64-bit computing on Intel chips. For those of us who do design work it’s a noticeable performance boost. For developers it opens new avenues to increase performance and exploit the Intel multi-core chips…

Granted, as litespeed and others assert, SL may not make that much of an immediately visible difference for many of us.

DT’s concisely hit some of the main points I’ve heard elaborated on MGG and two other podcasts since Monday. As a fairly knowledgeable end user but with only a general grasp on the programming issues, I appreciate SL for not merely what obvious gains it may bring right now, but also what it sets the stage for. Developers can now start conjuring up some wicked 64-bit stuff that may become VERY visible, VERY marketable, by, ohh, I dunno—Christmas shopping season?

Which will also help nudge undecided switchers—and those buying up—

I was expecting $49-$79 for just a personal upgrade. So yeah, baby, I’ve got $29 plus tax tightly gripped in my sweaty little palm, just waiting to turn that page from August to September.

New features: Enterprise compliance for all the apps. iCal, Mail, Address Book are now Exchange compliant. That’s worth the $29 right off the top.

Additional new features:
Quicktime X
true 64 bit
graphics changes

Sounds very inviting.

My feeling is that is somewhat of an upgrade, but not a completely new OS, hence the modified name Snow Leopard instead of a different large cat. Will they dare name the next OS Cougar?

Anyway I hope that it doesn’t break CS4. It being an upgrade I would think not, but I may wait a few days and let some other Adobephile be an early adaptor.

Could Snow Leopard be a Psystar killer?

$49 for a family pack.
That means it will be $45 from Amazon.
That means $9/Mac in our family.
That is stupidly cheap.

davebarnes - 10 June 2009 10:26 AM

$49 for a family pack.
That means it will be $45 from Amazon.
That means $9/Mac in our family.
That is stupidly cheap.

It’s brilliant from a marketing standpoint and quite likely the right thing to do. 

With that out of the way, I’d like to add that it’s the kind of thing that saddens me about the world we live in.  I’d be willing to bet that they have more man years in snow leopard than they have in leopard.  This is a product that conceptually will dramatically improve your computing experience today and for many years into the future.  When was the last time that the industry returned disk space after upgrading an operating system.  I’m pretty sure the answer is never.  I would have loved to see them charge 229.00 and educate the masses on why it is a bargain at that price.

sleepytoo - 10 June 2009 01:43 AM

AFAIK this is t he first time than an Apple OS update hasn’t been compatible (apart from limited individual components) with every Mac bought new during the previous five years. That breach of policy may be the reason why Apple is de-emphasising new features. It’ll be more than another year before the last PPC Mac sold is five years old (17 inch powerbook?). That’s a good part of the reason why there are few features, and it’s still called Leopard. Apple are effectively positioning it as an Intel-only “service pack” in order not to upset old-timers still on PowerPC.

Oh no! I’m an old timer! But I’m only 38!
Curse you dual MDD G4 for aging me before my time!

Seriously thanks for posting that; I was wondering if it would work on PPC or not. We’ll definitely upgrade at work just for the Exchange support. How long before MS “upgrades” Exchange so it won’t work with Macs again.

It blows my mind that people will not pay for performance.  We go out and buy a new laptop or desktop for what?  performance or our old one is broke.  Instead of Intel selling you new silicon for $200 we get Apple to rewrite the core and convert their millions of line of software to the more modern foundations under Cocoa vs Carbon.  At some point Apple had to burn the engineering hours to make this change since intel is no longer able to significantly improve the core speed of a processor they are now resorting to multi-cores on the same die and in the process forced the OS developers to upgrade their designs or be stuck in performance hell.  The OpenCL and Grand Central initiatives make it much simpler to write threaded code which takes advantage of these future multi-core devices.  You can justify the $29 just through the security architecture improvements.  The move to all 64 bit increases the address space by orders of magnitude and with full implementation of address randomization we should continue to avoid the security fiasco which afflicted Windows.  I think it is a great deal and can justify not having to run Norton’s and spend my time with more productive things.