With its release scheduled for Friday, Snow Leopard’s spots are beginning to come into focus. The newest update to the Mac OS X operating system is getting reactions across the Web — including a tip on how to save money if you want to upgrade from the older Tiger version.
Snow Leopard, version 10.6 of Mac OS X, will cost $29 to upgrade from Leopard, version 10.5, first released in 2007. But if you have Tiger, the 2005 version 10.4, you can avoid Apple’s upgrade charge of $169, according to Walt Mossberg of The Wall Street Journal and others.
Only Tiger on Intel
According to some estimates, about a fifth of all Macs still run Tiger. Apple has said those users need to buy the Mac Box Set, which also includes iLife 09 and iWork09, while Leopard users only need to pay $29 to upgrade.
But Mossberg, a well-known computer columnist, received a great deal of attention Wednesday when he noted that the $29 Snow Leopard upgrade will work fine on Tiger. The only catch is that you must be running it on a Mac that uses an Intel processor. Tiger was able to run on both Mac’s former PowerPC platform as well as on Intel-based machines, but all Macs are now Intel-based.
Some observers have noted that this technically violates Apple’s end-user license agreement, although there are no restrictions or hurdles to prevent this. But Mossberg noted that Apple itself has said that the $29 upgrade will work fine on Tiger. “They’re just not advertising the fact,” said Laura DiDio, an analyst with Information Technology Intelligence Corp.
Even without pretending that a Tiger is a Leopard, prices are beginning to come down. On Amazon, where pre-orders are already making Snow Leopard a popular software product, the price on the Mac Box Set has dropped from…