Apple’s let the cat out of the bag (I had to) a little early: Mac OS 10.6, dubbed “Snow Leopard,” was scheduled for release sometime in September at the earliest, but Apple announced this week that they would take pre-orders for the highly-anticipated update to the OS immediately, and it would land in stores this Friday, on August 28th.
Since then there have been a flurry of articles on how to prep your system for Snow Leopard, announcements on which critical apps are supported or not supported, and more news around how to get your hands on Snow Leopard on launch day. Frankly, you can probably walk into your local Apple Store, Best Buy, Micro Center, or Fry’s, or any electronics store that sells Apple gear and pick up a copy.
We discussed some of the biggest benefits to Snow Leopard after the WWDC keynote earlier this year, but just to recap, some of the things people are most looking forward to are true Microsoft Exchange support, the introduction of full 64-bit support built-into the base of Mac OS, and a slimmer, trimmer, faster footprint all around. Best of all, even though the OS is a full 10.x release, it’s priced at $30 instead of the customary $129 – Apple says this is because the bulk of the work in 10.6 is behind the scenes and under the hood and less to the UI and included applications, so they couldn’t justify charging customers full license price for changes they’d feel when they used their Macs, but wouldn’t see in flashy ways. Additionally, Snow Leopard required Mac OS 10.5 to upgrade from if you want the $30 version – otherwise you’ll shell out the full $129 for a full upgrade from Mac OS 10.4 or earlier.
Personally? I’m waiting to see for a few weeks – with any major OS release there are bound to be issues, and I think I’ll wait to see what first impressions of the new OS are and what issues people run into may be before upgrading myself on my MacBook Pro. As much as I’d like to be that early adopter and give you guys that feedback here, I use my MacBook Pro too much! Check back in a few weeks and I’ll post some impressions.