Mac OS X Snow Leopard Discussion

By giga
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Grand Master

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I would buy it for $129 if the changes are as good as everyone is saying. But would regular users? Probably not. So I doubt Apple will charge the full price anyway. You can only put so much market spin on "we pretty much rewrote all the code, kept the same features and made everything faster". If it looks the same to a user, it is the same to the user. While a speed increase is huge for people like us, most people actually think Vista and Mac OS X are perfectly fast, when both companies have pretty much admitted they aren't.

Grand Master

Quillz

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I would buy it for $129 if the changes are as good as everyone is saying. But would regular users? Probably not. So I doubt Apple will charge the full price anyway. You can only put so much market spin on "we pretty much rewrote all the code, kept the same features and made everything faster". If it looks the same to a user, it is the same to the user. While a speed increase is huge for people like us, most people actually think Vista and Mac OS X are perfectly fast, when both companies have pretty much admitted they aren't.

I would argue that not all "regular users" are like that. To many, speed increases, or the notion of getting more done more efficiently is as good a feature as anything else. Frankly, how many features in Leopard get used every single day? Sure, I use Time Machine and Quick Look, but the improvements to Dictionary? Never used them. The improvements made to the Finder? I use Path Finder.

Now, imagine being told that in Snow Leopard, your system will boot faster, shut down faster and use overall fewer system resources. And this is a feature that's always on and invisible. That is a far better "feature" than being able to browse Wikipedia through the Dictionary. I really do think that Snow Leopard will continue to be sold for $129. They sold Puma for that price, and that was really nothing more than a service pack to 10.0.

Grand Master

Quillz

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Wasn't Puma a free upgrade, though?

Only if you already had Cheetah. Otherwise, it too cost $129. If Apple got away with charging for Puma, which literally added NO major end-user features, then they will be charging for Snow Leopard, too.

Grand Master

giga Veteran

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Only if you already had Cheetah. Otherwise, it too cost $129. If Apple got away with charging for Puma, which literally added NO major end-user features, then they will be charging for Snow Leopard, too.

If you didn't have Cheetah, then you had OS 9. Paying $129 from 9 to 10.1 wasn't exactly a highway robbery.

Grand Master

Quillz

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If you didn't have Cheetah, then you had OS 9. Paying $129 from 9 to 10.1 wasn't exactly a highway robbery.

A lot of critics didn't think so. And they felt justified considering Apple didn't make Mac OS X default on their computers until 10.1.2, which was released in late 2001, a full two months after Puma was first released.

Of course, that was then. Snow Leopard will be released under a totally different atmosphere.

Grand Master

giga Veteran

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A lot of critics didn't think so. And they felt justified considering Apple didn't make Mac OS X default on their computers until 10.1.2, which was released in late 2001, a full two months after Puma was first released.

Of course, that was then. Snow Leopard will be released under a totally different atmosphere.

So you're saying that Apple shouldn't have charged for people going from OS9 to 10.1? Sure it was still buggy, but it was a totally different operating system from 9.

Grand Master

Quillz

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So you're saying that Apple shouldn't have charged for people going from OS9 to 10.1? Sure it was still buggy, but it was a totally different operating system from 9.

No, I didn't say that at all. My whole point was that if Apple charged $129 for Puma, they will certainly charge $129 for Snow Leopard as well, considering that Snow Leopard will actually contain a lot of end-user features, but in terms of system performance.

Grand Master

giga Veteran

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No, I didn't say that at all. My whole point was that if Apple charged $129 for Puma, they will certainly charge $129 for Snow Leopard as well, considering that Snow Leopard will actually contain a lot of end-user features, but in terms of system performance.

If we're making a comparing of Cheetah (10.0) to Leopard (10.5), then Snow Leopard (10.6) should be free like Puma (10.1)--which mainly had performance and stability improvements. Apple didn't charge OS X users for Puma--only OS 9 users. (which is irrelevant now)

Grand Master

LTD

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So you're saying that Apple shouldn't have charged for people going from OS9 to 10.1? Sure it was still buggy, but it was a totally different operating system from 9.

Buggy or not, OS X 10.1 was a magnitude better (far better) then OS 9.

OS 8 and OS 9 only saw the light of day because Apple couldn't come up with anything better other than stopgap solutions, until someone had a better idea. Their whole OS paradigm was failing and the dev process was a joke, as it had been for a few years prior. Developers and previous partners were ready to dump Apple entirely until Steve finally returned and turned things around.

OS 8 and 9 weren't terrible, but they were disappointments considering what Apple could have done were it not for such colossal mismanagement. OS X, bugs and all, was a breath of fresh air.

Grand Master

Chicane-UK Veteran

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Finding myself in a bit of a dilemma. In short, Snow Leopard will have to be jaw droppingly good to make me buy it. If it's merely evolutionary I might be tempted to ditch my iMac and go back and give Windows 7 a try.

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wankey

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Finding myself in a bit of a dilemma. In short, Snow Leopard will have to be jaw droppingly good to make me buy it. If it's merely evolutionary I might be tempted to ditch my iMac and go back and give Windows 7 a try.

I have the same inclination. If Windows 7 turns out to be as fast as XP, as small as XP but with all the frills of Vista then I'm ditching OS X and going to Win7. The games and the sheer number of customizable applications Windows has far out strips OS X and the Mac world. I"ll keep my MBP as a portable laptop but I'll do all my work on the PC (which is way fast btw)

Proficient

d4v1d05

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Finding myself in a bit of a dilemma. In short, Snow Leopard will have to be jaw droppingly good to make me buy it. If it's merely evolutionary I might be tempted to ditch my iMac and go back and give Windows 7 a try.

Or, y'know, wait till OS 10.7, and install OS 7 (Uhh, I mean "Windows 7") using bootcamp?

I just wish they'd sort out the network "locations," something like the iphone's SSID-specific network settings would be lovely for laptops... :)

Grand Master

Chicane-UK Veteran

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Well my problem with Apple doesn't continue to be the software, but the hardware. And more specifically graphics cards. They have all these wonderful quick iMacs but they always have pants graphics cards in them. Even the 8800GS in the 24" iMac doesn't cut it frankly. And I just can't bring myself to pay Mac Pro money to own a machine capable of playing any recent games.

Snow Leopard + baby Mac Pro / headless iMac with upgradeable graphics = happy Chicane-UK. But Apple seem determined not to offer such a beast :(

Grand Master

LTD

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Well my problem with Apple doesn't continue to be the software, but the hardware. And more specifically graphics cards. They have all these wonderful quick iMacs but they always have pants graphics cards in them. Even the 8800GS in the 24" iMac doesn't cut it frankly. And I just can't bring myself to pay Mac Pro money to own a machine capable of playing any recent games.

Snow Leopard + baby Mac Pro / headless iMac with upgradeable graphics = happy Chicane-UK. But Apple seem determined not to offer such a beast :(

Macs really aren't for gamers. A current mac will do it, and probably do it alright. But not spectacularly.

Grand Master

Chicane-UK Veteran

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Macs really aren't for gamers.

But there is no technical reason why they shouldn't be. Apple are quite capable of sticking GOOD video cards into their systems - they just continue to choose not to (I guess primarily for heat reasons as they continue to prefer form over function) but it's frustrating for Mac owning gamers like myself who can't get one competetively priced system that ticks all of the boxes.

As I say - if I really have to do it I will buy a Mac Pro, but I'll bitch and complain the entire way to getting it. Or, I'll just buy the mother of all PC's and Windows 7 and just wait till Steve Jobs acknowledges the segment of the market he's been ignoring for so long - then I'll be back!

Grand Master

Quillz

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But there is no technical reason why they shouldn't be. Apple are quite capable of sticking GOOD video cards into their systems - they just continue to choose not to (I guess primarily for heat reasons as they continue to prefer form over function) but it's frustrating for Mac owning gamers like myself who can't get one competetively priced system that ticks all of the boxes.

As I say - if I really have to do it I will buy a Mac Pro, but I'll bitch and complain the entire way to getting it. Or, I'll just buy the mother of all PC's and Windows 7 and just wait till Steve Jobs acknowledges the segment of the market he's been ignoring for so long - then I'll be back!

I think Apple is well aware that they are ignoring gamers. And I think they are doing it intentionally, as there is more money to be made from "switchers" than from gamers.

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