OMG!!! Snow Leopard upgrade in Sept. for $29 family pack for $49

Luckily today is my day off so I've been watching the coverage on different blogs. I almost fell out of my chair when they announced the upgrade pricing.

Take that MS!!

http://www.engadget.com/2009/06/08/apple-shipping-snow-leopard-in-september-29-upgrade/

 

Can't wait for Snow Leopard. It's going to be awesome!

To tell you the truth, with all the things they're doing, like lowering the footprint of applications, processes when idle, 64bit etc. I would have payed $129 for Snow Leopard with no problem at all.

But now with this pricing, I'm even more excited!

 

Can not wait $29 bucks is nothing

 

$29 is an upgrade price from Leopard... Tiger users have to pay full price... for those few Tiger users on intel machines.

 

True but even at $169 for Tiger users it should be considered a steal.

 

I think it's going to be $129 for Tiger users if I'm not mistaken...

 

I'm gonna get spanked for saying this but it seems quite like a big service pack, if ms did that then they'd get a hundred million complaints, anyway thats my opinion. (waits for a million flames)

 

kind of like one, but its more... it has hundreds of new features, and can run fully 64bit.

were you looking for a spanking though...?

 

Fair enough , it has a lot more features than a service pack, maybe I'm just being too harsh

 

I dunno... depends on your point of view...

after using both Vista and Win7, Win7 seems like a big service pack to me... but others call it a major upgrade

 

I agree, I was burned by Microsoft's compatibility checker when I upgraded to Vista. I stuck around long enough to try the Windows 7 Beta before switching to Mac. I saw W7 as nothing more than a service pack and didn't see any big advancements in it. In fact some of my performance went down in W7 beta (networking to be specific).

OSX on the other hand was like a huge upgrade to me compared to Vista and W7 beta. SL looks like it will improve things even more so I will happily pay the upgrade price. If you ask me SL looks like more of a major work over than W7.

 

Nope, $169 but the box set includes iLife 09 and iWork 09. Not a bad deal if you ask me.

 

Anyone buying a mac from now will get Snow Leopard for $10 (shipping cost of disk).

 

From Apple site:
"If you purchased a qualifying system or Xserve on or after June 8, 2009 that does not include Mac OS X Snow Leopard, you can upgrade to Mac OS X Snow Leopard for $9.95."

 

How is rewriting whole chunks of the OS "a service pack"? You don't know what a service pack is.

 

This super cheap update should be the least that Microsoft should be offering Vista customers. Apple does this mean its operating system is just fine, but I imagine Microsoft will want those of us, who lets be honest, suffered under Vista to pay full price for it.

And on the whole service pack thing. I see it as a refresh, all the OSX upgrades over the past decade or so have been just that. You can't exactly compare the way Microsoft and Apple choose to release their upgraded operating systems to customers. Basically by calling Snow Leopard a service pack you are trying to make it fit the Microsoft model of doing things.

 

To be honest, it is more of a service pack, which you do get for free on Windows. However, Leopard was to Tiger what 7 is to Vista, and that was only $129 rather than $250+, so it pretty much evens out.

I was probably going to skip Snow Leopard at $129, but at $29 there's no way I can pass up the performance boost.

 

Agreed. Apple and Microsoft do things quite differently. Microsoft's service packs are largely fixes and patches, but they also offer new features occasionally. Those are free, but the OS is expensive. Apple tends to release patches and fixes as 10.5.x releases and features as 10.x releases, but they cost less than full Windows release.

 

I was scratching my head about the Best Buy leak saying a W7 upgrade was going to be $59. Even at that price I don't see anything in W7 that is worth the money after my experience with Vista and W7 Beta. SL on the other hand looks like it is worth $129 but Apple is only going to charge $29. I'm going to upgrade my 3 systems using the family pack for less than the cost of 1 upgrade to W7. Gotta love that!

 

And also with OS X you dont have to worry about deciding whether to buy, home, premium, business, ultimate and wondering what features your misssing if you get one of the lower ones.

 

Epic win for Apple!

 

I prefer MS's upgrade solution.
"Folks who buy a Leopard machine between now and December can get the upgrade for $10 in shipping. "

Folks who buy a Vista machine between 3 weeks from now to Windows 7 launch gets Windows 7 upgrade for free. Though, upgrade for user who purchased before the free upgrade period will have to pay more than $50 for it. It's not that expensive either.

 

I think it's debateable.

Both Apple and MSFT release frequent individual fixes (generally bug and security related). These come out just about monthly or even more frequently than that depending on the severity of the bug or security hole.

MSFT releases service packs but tends to do it less frequently, packaging all the individual cumulative fixes to date. Apple does the same thing but does it more frequently (10.5.1 through to 10.5.7 for example). Both essentially change the name of the Operating system, i.e. Vista SP1 vs. Vista SP2, and OSX 10.5 .1 vs. 10.5 .6.

And of course both do the major releases too; Vista to 7 and Leopard to Snow Leopard. And because they both have "Leopard" in them, there are many misguided posts on the internet saying that SL is just a service pack for Leopard which for anyone who studied the underlying changes between the two know full well that this is much more than a service pack.

And in the same token those who say 7 is just another service pack for Vista are also somewhat misguided.

 

So True!

The pricing is awesome. Hopefully, MS will follow suit and doesn't over charge for Win7 upgrades.

 

Yeah but they have no upgrade policy if you already own vista. You will have to pay full price.

Service packs are just all the bug fixes and minor updates rolled up into one pack. SL is way more then that.

 

yeah. mac users like it when apple tells them what they should use.

buy ultimate, then you don't have to worry about what's missing.

 

That is the whole point with OSX, you don't have to worry about multiple versions and what's missing.

 

Please tell me you have a link to an actual Microsoft announcement and are not quoting a leaked Best Buy memo. The Best buy memo only lists the update for Vista Premium users as $49.99, professional users will pay $99.99. Since the deal is only running for a short period of time it looks more like a Best Buy promotion to me rather than official pricing. I'm also sure that there will be fine print adding the cost of shipping for the free W7 upgrade for people buying a new Vista system.

 

Choice. That's the whole point of Windows pricing scheme. Why is that so bad?

 

Two problems:

1) Your solution is . . . to tell Windows folks what to use?
2) If you buy OS X, then you don't have to worry about what's missing. You can't buy a copy without the full gui the same way you can buy Aero-less Windows. You can't get an Apple with OS X Leopard that doesn't also have iLife. Or Time Machine support.

I don't have a horse in this race. I don't hate Windows at all. And I don't hate Apple or OS X at all, either. Looking objectively at the way that the two are sold and marketed, I prefer the Apple model. Funny thing is, you apparently feel the same way (recommending Vista Ultimate for all purchasers).

 

This is why it's bad. If Joe consumer wants to upgrade his home computer from XP to Vista, his options are:

Vista Home Premium ($130)
Vista Business ($200)
Vista Ultimate ($220)

If he wants to get the latest (fully featured) Mac OS, his choice is

OS X 10.5 ($130)

So the perception is not that Microsoft is helping him by offering choices. Rather, the perception is that Microsoft is "charging extra" for certain features.

In Microsoft's defense, that isn't by accident. Apple's price point is not a coincidence. They do that intentionally, to make sure customers get the impression that MS hurts them by charging extra rather than helps them by offering choices.

It's kind of a pointless argument anyway. Since OS X is exclusive to Apple hardware, we'll never really know how much of the cost of the OS is charged directly for the software, and how much it is subsidized by hardware.

 

Nothing wrong with it but in this Apple does indeed give you a choice; a choice to pick and choose whatever feature in OSX to use. There are a ton of features in OSX that I don't make use of but they're there if I ever want to start using them in the future without having to upgrade my edition of the OS. Apple just makes the choice of purchasing simple by having only one SKU. Why is that so bad?

 

I bet one would rather just buy a new computer rather than upgrading. Better computer + Better hardware = more money for MS + more money for manufacturer + better user experience

 

$29 is a really, really great price. Snow Leopard looks like a solid update, too. Apple has really been improving in all aspects lately.

 

That's because the new UI for 7 hasn't been established yet, so they will continue to use the vista style until they decide what 7 should look like. It was the same with the early vista betas looking like xp, and xp looking like 2000.

$29 is appealing, but if it's a true upgrade, that's going to stink. Having to upgrade from an already existing leopard install, and not a clean install.

 

Correct me if I'm wrong, but the screenshots I'm seeing doesn't show any significant UI changes?

Most of the updates has is related to performance gains and feature updates, etc etc...

 

I've never seen an OSX "upgrade" disk before, as in Upgrade in the sense like MSFT does it where you can't officially do a clean install. It'll most likely be a regular OSX disk which allows you to do either a clean or an upgrade install. It might be a device-specific disk, i.e. for MBP, MB or iMac etc...

 

it does have some visual updates,but you are right,this time they worked on under the hood staff...however,apple is working on new "Marble" interface,which they l release shortly(quoting blogs)

 

That's fantastic. I wish Windows upgrades were so cheap I'd do it yearly.

Oh wait they only release an OS.. well.. a couple times a decade.

They're too expensive. You only get new Windows with new computers nowadays.

And vista ultimate used to be way more expensive. Especially when they were duping more people into getting it with promises of things that never appeared. Totally worthless

 

With cheap Macbook pros and cheap snow leopard, Apple is really kicking MS in the shins! I think the MBP prices will see a LOT more switchers.

 

If Snow Leopard is a new OS. Why isn't it called OS 11?

 

That's like asking why MS didn't call its new OS Vista 2.0 . Oh wait, its obvious why MS dropped the Vista name.

 

Well, if Windows 7 is the 7th version of Windows, call me stupid, but it kind of makes sense to me. (I can see the difference between Windows 98, Windows XP, Vista, which I only used for a few weeks, and Windows 7)

But I don't get how everyone here considers it a new Mac OS version when the numbering scheme goes 10.1, 10.2, 10.3...

I guess it's semantics.

 

Are you sure its the 7th version of Windows? http://www.microsoft.com/windows/WinHistoryDesktop.mspx

 

No, i really don't track these things (i was gonna ad a comment in my last post like "if it really is the 7th version").

Anyway, back on topic - not sure it's that big of change for OSX, but I can afford the $29 to find out.

 

Have you watched the video? Its more of a change than you think.

 

Apple would like to be able to keep on using the term OS X. If it became 11.0 then it would no longer be OS X but OS XI

Well thats my 2c.

 

So, like how I went from Tiger to Leopard I assume going from L to SL will leave all my data intact correct?

 

You can also do a Time Machine backup, then clean install Snow Leopard and then migrate your stuff using the migrate wizard using the latest Time Machine image. Although I've only tried doing that once, it was very slick.

 

Its a good move if you ask me. They explained in presentation that OS X was very well received and they wanted to build on top of that success. Of course they threw in a jab about how Microsoft wants to distance itself from Vista.