Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard - Now Available (Delivery on Aug. 28th)

http://store.apple.com/us/product/MAC_OS_X_SNGL?mco=NzgxMDc3NA

by mrduncan • 17 years ago

129 117 17 years ago

store.apple.com

uggedal• 17 years ago

What about those stuck on Tiger (my gf)? Buy Leopard and Snow Leopard update or buy a full version?

baseonmars• 17 years ago

looks like they're recommending the 'Mac Box Set' http://store.apple.com/uk/product/MACBOX-101801

barredo• 17 years ago

<s>I'll buy a full version if I were in Tiger.</s>

Edit: Mac Box Set seems a better choice too, US link: http://store.apple.com/us/product/MACBOX-101801 169$

pmorici• 17 years ago

In the description it says perfect way to upgrade for tiger users, does it not?

stuff4ben3• 17 years ago

I'm still on Tiger and I'm probably not going to upgrade. I have a first-gen "lapburner" MBP which works just fine. Leopard didn't really offer anything ground breaking and it doesn't appear Snow Leopard will either. And I figure anything ground-breaking will require newer hardware, so I guess I'll stay on Tiger until the machine stops working. Which coincidentally is also why XP users don't upgrade either.

yardie2• 17 years ago

I think it depends. If you have a first-gen MBP than you are better off getting the new OS. 10.4 "supported" Intel chips but it always felt like a hack between PPC and Intel platforms. 10.5, and each update since, has gotten progressively better for Intel chips.

I think you've fallen for the marketing trap where a list of features has to be present for it to be worth something. Not many lists include code and platform optimizations because it doesn't market well. I've used OS X since 10.1 and each update has gotten remarkably better. Things have mellowed out in 10.5 but the OS feels fully baked.

zzkt• 17 years ago

I've upgraded a few MBPs (1st & 2nd gen) and even some old powerbooks all of which perform perceivably better with 10.5 YMMV

dasil003• 17 years ago

Time machine alone was worth the price of admission. There were also some good unix upgrades in there if that sort of thing carries any weight with you.

tptacek2• 17 years ago

Insanity. Before Leopard, Spotlight was a debacle. After Leopard, it just works. Also: isn't there a whole lot of software you can't install now because Tiger doesn't have Core Animation and isn't LP64?

I also wouldn't trust Tiger security on an external network.

laut• 17 years ago

The difference is that Mac OS X tends to get faster with newer versions. Apparently Snow Leopard even takes up less disk space. Not the case with newer versions of Windows.

fendale2• 17 years ago

I wonder how its going to work. If you have Leopard and your hard disk dies - do you have to install Leopard and then upgrade to Snow Leopard (which would be a pain), or will the upgrade allow a clean install onto a blank hard disk?

Still on Tiger here too, which is my main reason for wondering if I can get away with the $29 version!?

graywh• 17 years ago

$29 version is only an upgrade for Leopard users.

cooldude127• 17 years ago

Reports indicate that the $29 version will install on a clean machine just fine, no need to install Leopard first. It's kind of an honor system thing with Apple.

m_eiman• 17 years ago

What's with the query string on the link, is that an affiliate identifier? The link works just fine without it, in either case.

mrduncan2• 17 years ago

No, not an affiliate id I simply copied the url straight out of my address bar - I'm guessing it's a session id or something.

Here is the id-less link for anyone who doesn't believe me (I can't change the url of the post unfortunately): http://store.apple.com/us/product/MAC_OS_X_SNGL

natrius• 17 years ago

If it were an affiliate ID, I don't see why it would matter.

mdasen• 17 years ago

May I ask how it is "now available"? From the site, it says that it will be delivered Friday. Did Apple not update the page this links to? Is this an "it's available for purchase now for delivery later" post that the headline is misleading me on?

mrduncan2• 17 years ago

Fair point, I've updated the headline to reflect the delivery date.

sho6• 17 years ago

Oh, it's "now available" all right. Might not be 100% legal in your jurisdiction, though.

mseebach2• 17 years ago

Hmm, not exactly convincing. Leopard brought stuff like time machine, this smells more like a big service pack. I mean, OpenCL and some of the central applications running 64-bit? Better Quicktime and a new Safari? I don't even use QT and Safari.

And it's $29? Too little to be too much, but still a lot for a service pack.

pibefision• 17 years ago

Also, there is some software that needs an update to work well on Snow Leopard, for example MacPorts.

arthurk• 17 years ago

Apple has a few employees working on MacPorts who, along with the ADC devs, did a great job updating it for Snow Leopard in the past few months.

1.8-rc1 has already been tagged in svn and I'm sure the final version will be ready in time :)

yardie2• 17 years ago

Did you even read link?

Here http://www.apple.com/macosx/technology/ are the new features that went into this release. And your comment doesn't even make sense, first you say it's a service pack than you rattle off a short list of new and upgraded items. These things do cost money to develop. And I'm pretty sure $29 barely covers the cost of it. I don't remember anything new being in Windows when a SP rolled out except a new browser. (There was the uPNP browser that popped up in SP2 I believe)

mseebach2• 17 years ago

Every other "system update" reboot I've made for the past 20 months seems to have included an update to QuickTime and Safari -- both of which, by the way, are available as free downloads -- and the prominent featuring of those two products as a component of a whole new version of an OS makes it feel like a service pack.

ionfish• 17 years ago

It depends on what you plan to do with it, I suppose. I'm personally happy to pay merely for a decent chunk of performance improvements (isn't that what we do when we buy faster computers, after all?), but the new frameworks are also interesting—OpenCL, for example.

stevoski• 17 years ago

Snow Leopard has always been described by Apple as a performance and stability upgrade.

cpr3• 17 years ago

When Apple first announce 10.6, they said it wouldn't have any end-user features, but just a lot of re-engineering under the hood. Well, they couldn't help themselves, and there are a bunch of smaller features, plus things like Exchange support across the board.

And there really has been a lot of re-engineering, most of it focussed on making things a lot faster and smaller.

I think Apple deserve our thanks for actually making performance and improved footprint an explicit goal of a major release, rather than larding on new feature after new feature in some kind of misguided feature war.

Xixi• 17 years ago

Apple choosed speed, optimization and refinement over features. And I welcome this choice wholeheartedly, enough bloat already... make my OS faster, slimmer and more robust and I'll be happy.

Sadly the price point of Snow Leopard, and the sort of reaction that you have make me think that the big shops will continue to make ever more massive and bloated softwares...

After all, you get what you are ready to pay for : if you think features are worth more bucks than optimization, that's what you'll get.

sant0sk1• 17 years ago

Nice to see Apple shipping before their publicized time frame (September). A rarity.

prakash2• 17 years ago

The other way to look at this is that Apple gave themselves plenty of buffer to ship.

raganwald3• 17 years ago

True, but unlike practically everyone else they didn't allow their work to fit the expanded time available. Everyone builds in buffers and pads their estimates, but few people are able to work to their original true estimate.

siculars• 17 years ago

just ordered the family box set. better deal, imho.

http://store.apple.com/us/product/MACBOX-101801 click the family pack option...

Also, there is no difference in price when purchasing under the education store, afaik.

bcl• 17 years ago

I really like the Apple Family pack pricing. I almost never buy a single copy anymore.

feverishaaron3• 17 years ago

Anyone know how those of us who bought an mac recently get it for $10? I didn't see a link on that page.

mwijns• 17 years ago

It seems so:

http://www.apple.com/macosx/uptodate/

feverishaaron3• 17 years ago

Thanks. Just found it as well.

feverishaaron3• 17 years ago

FYI, as of right now, they aren't passing the info from the verification screen to the cart correctly, so you have to use the fax-in form.

http://images.apple.com/macosx/uptodate/docs/OSX_HW_UTD_FF.p...

cpr3• 17 years ago

http://www.apple.com/macosx/refinements/ for all those who claims it's just a service pack.

But, as I said elsewhere, the major improvements are under the hood.

johns• 17 years ago

As a non Mac OS user, that link just reinforces to me that it looks like just a service pack. But at $29, I don't think it matters. If it were $129, that would be ridiculous.

umjames• 17 years ago

As a user, yes, but as a developer, there's some really awesome stuff in this release (both from the perspectives of the apps being developed and from the tools used to build them). Can't wait.

cpr3• 17 years ago

Whoops--I didn't realize that all the changes weren't under that one link. You have to look at all four:

http://www.apple.com/macosx/refinements/

http://www.apple.com/macosx/technology/

http://www.apple.com/macosx/universal-access/

http://www.apple.com/macosx/exchange/

tjweir• 17 years ago

Maybe this blog post will help: http://reverttosaved.com/2009/08/24/helpful-hints-for-mac-us...

FiveFiftyOne• 17 years ago

I'll get it and pray that the Exchange integration makes using Mail and iCal a little smoother. Besides, I just like upgrading to new releases :-)

cubicle673• 17 years ago

Note: Exchange 2007 only

stewiecat• 17 years ago

If I can dump Entourage the $29 will be more than worth it.

kasterma2• 17 years ago

Requires: Mac computer with an Intel processor. No upgrade for my 12" powerbook. :-(

http://www.apple.com/macosx/specs.html

kasterma2• 17 years ago

Requires: Mac computer with an Intel processor. No upgrade for my 12" powerbook. :-(

http://www.apple.com/macosx/specs.html

brk• 17 years ago

This is a surprise? I think that lack of support for the PPC Mac's has been pretty well known for some time now.

philfreo• 17 years ago

I think the removal of PowerPC support is why the OS is now something like 6 or 7GB smaller than before.

dchest3• 17 years ago

The same mistake, again and again. Please read http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=747316

Zev2• 17 years ago

But it then adds in x86_64 support, which brings the size back up. The smaller files are likely to be from not installing all the resources (localizations, drivers, etc) at once if not needed.

far33d2• 17 years ago

Can someone give a quick non-marketing-speak version of what Grand Central Dispatch really does?

cubicle673• 17 years ago

something to do with phonecalls I think...

Actually (and I'll hide my lack of knowledge by being vague) it's a means of making it easier for developers to create robust multicore capable software. I think.

Hoff• 17 years ago

GCD is an updated and up-rated scheduler for Mac OS X.

The following does contain marketeering, but also has some decent technical details:

http://images.apple.com/macosx/technology/docs/GrandCentral_...

scott_s2• 17 years ago

While I'm sure the scheduler had to be changed to accommodate it, it's not primarily a new scheduler. It's really a sophisticated thread pool system implemented in the kernel and exposed to programmers through language extensions.

See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thread_pool_pattern for the basics on the idea - which has been around for a long time.

jpcx01• 17 years ago

Holy shit. Early chrismas!

jamesbritt• 17 years ago

Does anyone know if installing Snow Leopard requires the user to agree to allow Apple to collect unspecified user data?

donw• 17 years ago

Anybody know if you can install this on a clean hard drive? I've got Leopard on my MacBook, but want to swap out the existing drive and start fresh on a new SSD. Would be nice to not have to do a Leopard -> Snow Leopard dance.

potatolicious• 17 years ago

Apple doesn't do "upgrades" - if you bought a retail copy it will install fresh on any Intel Mac.

dchest3• 17 years ago

Technically, it does (cheap upgrade copy of Tiger for those, who purchased Mac with Panther after the announcement of Tiger, required Panther). Still, I believe it's true that you can do a fresh install.

sho6• 17 years ago

You might want to hold off a little while before upgrading, at least until 10.6.1. I upgraded my laptop 3 days ago and since then I've had at least 5 Mail.app crashes, finder a couple of times, and one terminal crash. I did an upgrade install, maybe a clean one is better, but I'm pretty surprised at the instability.

Also, if you use Macports, that's not up to speed yet so you'll be doing a lot of fiddling around to get that working. For example, I had to patch the port for Erlang to get that to install on 10.6, there's probably others. Wait a few weeks and that should all be sorted out for you.

unalone4• 17 years ago

How'd you get 10.6? Were they releasing developer copies?

sho6• 17 years ago

Sure, but only high level developers got them. However, I was able to learn the final build number from a friend, then I just downloaded it off BT.

I have a copy on order but couldn't wait. Call it time-shifting.

tvon• 17 years ago

I've been using it for a week on a 1st gen MBP (32 bit) and haven't had any crashes.

I don't use Erlang, but I have a lot of packages from MacPorts (mysql5, mercurial, git, svn, xorg, perl5 and python26 ) installed without any problems. The only thing I've tried to build that failed is screen.

I did a clean install, so that may be the difference maker.

sho6• 17 years ago

This is a 64bit MBP so that is another difference.

Yeah, all of those installed without an issue for me too. Of course, you also had to build macports itself from source, since there is no binary yet.

rbanffy5• 17 years ago

I am quite surprised no other operating system has something like GCD. Is that MarketingSpeak or is it really something new?

prospero2• 17 years ago

.NET has had runtime-wide thread pools since its inception. Unless there's something fundamental about GCD that I'm missing, that puts Windows at least 7 years ahead of OSX on this count.

rbanffy5• 17 years ago

Well... Java had them (in almost every OS it ran on) since day 1 too. That puts it a couple years ahead of .NET

c00p3r• 17 years ago

llvm-gcc?

plainspace• 17 years ago

here is a link to the 09 wwdc presentation. you can skip to the 10.6 section:

http://events.apple.com.edgesuite.net/0906paowdnv/event/inde...

dny• 17 years ago

The first OS and computer that is fully accessible out of the box. http://www.apple.com/macosx/universal-access/

I can't believe it has been considered important enough to be one of the major features of Snow Leopard, I am so happy for the blind and visually impaired. They did it with the new iPhone the first commercialized accessible touchscreen and they are doing it again with the new Mac OS. Apple is the most innovative tech company there is no doubt about it.

snprbob862• 17 years ago

Even in marketting copy, Apple's design taste is unrivaled:

http://www.apple.com/macosx/

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windows-7/

I mean seriously, how many levels of tabs are too many?

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windows-7/features/whats-ne...

unalone4• 17 years ago

Apple's marketing is an added feature. I get a lot of joy looking through their ad copy, in a way that I get out of very few marketing departments'.

I always wonder why Microsoft is so bad at advertising. They're not a stupid company. They create products that are nearly always good, if rarely (in my opinion) great. But they've never shown any sort of strength-of-focus and they make things that are ugly. I don't get it. In cases like this, it's easier to make something that's stark and simple than it is to make something cluttered and unappealing.

wmeredith• 17 years ago

The difference you're seeing is design that's driven by an individual with a single strong voice versus a committee. For clarification, I'm saying that Steve Jobs designed this web page, but whoever did was someone with the authority and the balls to say, "no" over and over to many different people. Those Windows 7 pages reek of too many cooks in the kitchen and/or lack of leadership.

Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard - Now Available (Delivery on Aug. 28th)

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