Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard has an image problem. It's largely scrimped on crowd-pleasing features in favour of a lie-down so its owners can pick over its fleas - where it will inevitably be crushed under the wheels of the mighty Windows 7 juggernaut.
Is this what us Mac users really want to happen?
The problem is largely one of Apple's own making. Even since Mac OS X made its debut, Apple's been serving up updates faster than a burger van after closing time - first with Cheetah (2001), then Puma (2001), Jaguar (2002), Panther (2003), Tiger (2005) and most recently Leopard (2007).
The result of all this is that Apple's has made operating systems sexy in a way you just couldn't have imagined 10 years ago - why else has Microsoft been scrabbling to come up with its own lickable features?
It's also why expectations for the next iteration of Mac OS X have risen with every new release - that is until Apple put the brakes on last year when it announced Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard - this one's all back-to-basics and under-the-hood improvements.
The sense of disappointment - rightly or wrongly - is palpable.
So far, so ho-hum
The atmosphere at WWDC 2009 was telling - a spot of Windows bashing by Bertrand Serlet - the man in charge of Mac OS X - was greeted sniffly, and when he started trying to wow the crowd with the 'amazing' new features of Snow Leopard you could smell the apathy.
A ground-up rewrite, Grand Central Dispatch, Open CL, full 64-bit and Microsoft Exchange support might be great for developers and enterprise, but it's hard to sell those benefits on to the likes of us ordinary folks who use Macs day in day out.
SMALL CHANGE: "So this is the new Mac OS, eh? Looks exactly the same as the last one to me." "But, but... oh never mind"
Instead we were presented with a new version of QuickTime, some Finder tweaks and an improved version of Stacks - a feature that wasn't all that great to start with.
No wonder Snow Leopard will only cost £29.99 when it goes on sale in September. Apple would be hard pressed to charge anything more.
The biggest disappointment for many Mac users will be the news - long suspected - that Snow Leopard will be Intel-only. Fans who've splashed thousands on 64-bit PowerPC Power Macs will lose out, so too will owners of other legacy systems.
Apple's decision is understandable - it likes to focus on the where the ball is going, not where it is has been, remember? - but then...
Does Apple do service packs?
Despite all of the necessary 'under the hood' improvements in Snow Leopard, this release has the inescapable air of a service pack about it.
It's arguably what Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard would have been all along if Apple hadn't been distracted by the glittering prize of the iPhone.
Apple's enjoyed success with Leopard because it was 'good enough' when stacked up against Windows Vista rather being a great leap forward.
With Windows 7 looming, Mac OS X is unlikely to continue basking in its own light for long.
For now Snow Leopard will have to do - but we want to see tangible evidence of the real world benefits these changes will bring.
Let's hope they're a darn sight better than the lame Mail hyper-threading demo Apple showed us yesterday.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Liked this? Then check out 5 Mac OS 9 features Apple should bring back
Sign up for TechRadar's free Weird Week in Tech newsletter
Get the oddest tech stories of the week, plus the most popular news and reviews delivered straight to your inbox. Sign up at http://www.techradar.com/register
Your comments (26) Click to add a new comment
zachareasy
September 20th
26. Silly Robert, Microsoft can't compete with the security, power, and reliability of a Unix based OS. Enough with following what made Microsoft a standard in the first place, propaganda.
Alert a moderator
cousindirk
August 23rd
25. I don't really agree with this article.
Yes, it is true that Windows 6.1 has raised their bar, and by quite a bit. But the OS X bar is already far higher.
Alert a moderator
lzy23
August 21st
24. Calling Snow leopard a service pack would be an insult to the hard work the people at apple have put in for it. I don't really see anything to service. It's an upgrade, not a SERVICE pack.
Service is the provision of necessary maintenance work on a machine. The fact that windows names it as such is fitting for the **** ups and screws on the PC.
Windows 7 may be great, but will it be good enough to stop people from using OSX? A few minutes of boot camp and i guess the hard-drive can already be thrown away. Will OSX cause people to switch over to it? Most likely.
I won't be surprised if the writer was paid to discriminate apple and put microsoft in a good light.
Alert a moderator
hss1
June 21st
23. i have got both Snow leopard and Windows 7 at home running on the same spec machines and snow leopard is very quick.
It is not a service pack, is normal tasks snow leopard beats Windows 7 and its very stable!!!
Alert a moderator
hss1
June 21st
22. when was a 90% code change a service pack?
Alert a moderator
lovlid
June 14th
21. I just love how weezer has to explain what **** means. He's not a worked up fanboy at all, is he?. But hey, dont get mad weezer, Im just having a giggle, you've made my weekend.
Alert a moderator
Tell us what you think
You need to Log in or register to post comments