Snow leopard upgrade for $29

[Fillado]

No, they charge more because they don't have the luxury of asking £1K-odd for a laptop that's not worth anywhere near that.

I expect Apple will cite this as a reason it's "better" than Vista/7, when in practice they're saving you £50 so they can ask £500 more on the hardware side.

What you tend to find with Apple is that in the lower tiers of hardware (MacBook, MacBook Pro 13", Mac mini, iMac) the price is fairly close to a PC of equivelent spec. It's when you reach MacBook Pros and the Mac Pro that prices tend to skyrocket.

More than the price, the biggest issue is that they funnel you into your computer choice. Not them existing to serve your computing choice. Already have a good monitor? Mac mini or Mac Pro. Want a 17" laptop? £1,849 goes bye-bye.

As for the original topic, loads of people in Mac forums were like "Wow, MS suck, go Apple!" and the like. Snow Leopard is pretty much:

Delete PPC code
Recompile apps for 64bit and stress-test
*Actual* additions (rewritten Finder, GCD, OpenCL, Quicktime X)
Sprinkles on top

It's somewhere between a Service Pack and a new OS. So it's actually priced perfectly.

 

[NickK]

It's somewhere between a Service Pack and a new OS. So it's actually priced perfectly.

OSX supposedly took about 1.5 years of 1000 developers before it appeared in it's first guise.

It's not a new OS, it is as you've stated focused on specialisation for the hardware platform they have- Intel 64bit, multicore and programmable GPU.

All grand central is is basically a task that gets put into a threadpool queue - the funkyness is that todo this just requires:

if (...)  ^{ printf("It's a grand central threaded task!\n"); }

Of course there's more behind the scenes - I'd like to see how far that threading goes into I/O routines and the kernel.. but I'll wait until September.

 

[Feek]

I'm more than happy with the price for Snow Leopard, I'll be buying a family pack as I have a couple of machines to upgrade and I'd like to stay legit.

 

[electric ant]

Im still on Tiger, hopefully the price of Snow Leopard standalone disc isnt too much, as opposed to upgrade from leopard.

 

[Fillado]

Upgrading from Mac OS X v10.4 Tiger.
If your Intel-based Mac is running Mac OS X v10.4 Tiger, purchase the Mac Box Set (when available), which is a single, affordable package that includes Mac OS X v10.6 Snow Leopard; iLife ’09, with the latest versions of iPhoto, iMovie, GarageBand, iWeb, and iDVD; and iWork ’09, Apple’s productivity suite for home and office including Pages, Numbers, and Keynote.

 

[RandomTom]

Still on Tiger here too.

Any word on how much $29 will actually equate to for us in the UK though: £19, £29?

 

[NickK]

Still on Tiger here too.

Any word on how much $29 will actually equate to for us in the UK though: £19, £29?

The $29 is the Leopard (10.5.x) -> Snow Leopard (10.6.x).

I think it's the regular $89 for Tiger (10.4.x) -> Snow Leopard.

I would bet, based on the previous releases, that it'll a near straight currency switch (~£80).

 

[RandomTom]

The $29 is the Leopard (10.5.x) -> Snow Leopard (10.6.x).

Yeh I knew that, was just wondering about Apple converted things over for us.

I think it's the regular $89 for Tiger (10.4.x) -> Snow Leopard.

Not bad, but if it's £80 that's not exactly the most equal currency conversion ever.

 

[electric ant]

Not bad, but if it's £80 that's not exactly the most equal currency conversion ever.

Should be a lot cheaper on HE pricing, e.g. Leopard is £58 right now.
The mac box set including ilife sounds intriguing for $169, no word on uk price yet tho.

 

[Fillado]

The $29 is the Leopard (10.5.x) -> Snow Leopard (10.6.x).

I think it's the regular $89 for Tiger (10.4.x) -> Snow Leopard.

I would bet, based on the previous releases, that it'll a near straight currency switch (~£80).

From the way it's worded on their site you have no option but get the Mac Box Set. I think the only lone discs will be Leopard > Snow Leopard ones.

I could be mistaken though, but that's what it says

 

[Gas Panic!]

I've been considering re-installing Leopard for a couple of weeks, but I might just wait until Snow Leopard comes out. When you upgrade, is there a way (like with Windows) to say, "Reinstall the OS fresh, delete apps, but keep my documents"?

 

[Cybertronic]

As far as I know, there isn't a way of doing that. The closest way is only upgrading the OS and keeping everything else intact. Wouldn't it be easier to backup your documents folder, format, install Snow Leopard and restore your documents folder?

 

[Draeconis]

Disagree. They screw up because they offer all the different versions.

One version. One Price. It would be so much simpler to market, and they would only have to change the installer i.e. when you install you select "Business" and it only install the business stuff, "Gamer" and it would install everything etc etc.

True, but a major part of why Snow Leopard is much cheaper is because as Apple have admitted themselves; this less about features and more about stability and performance, tweaking Leopard into a fully 64bit multi-core OpenCL compliant OS. It's not as much of a paradigm shift like say Tiger to Leopard was, ergo it's cheaper

Whereas, whilst Microsoft are comparatively doing the same thing; taking Vista and tweaking it to run faster and be more stable, they're gonna come a cropper here because I can't see them pricing Windows 7 nearly as competitively as Apple will with Snow Leopard (and they can't really afford to either).

As for the upgrade/full install point, whilst the ethos behind the production of Snow Leopard is clearly a maintenance release (albeit a hefty one), this will clearly (in keeping with Apple's form) be a full install disk.

 

[Deleted member 651465]

I've been considering re-installing Leopard for a couple of weeks, but I might just wait until Snow Leopard comes out. When you upgrade, is there a way (like with Windows) to say, "Reinstall the OS fresh, delete apps, but keep my documents"?

Yes, it's called Archive and Install.