Snow Leopard is little more than a service pack

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.

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.

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.

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!!!

22. when was a 90% code change a service pack?

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.

20. You might think at a first glance that Rob Mead is on Microsoft's payroll, but it just cannot be. I mean, this article is so ridiculous, that it's obvious that we're having smart double-play here: El Jobso (or some of his cronies) gave a phonecall to Rob, and ask him to write such a preposterous piece of Windows praise, that it will work quite the opposite. Well, congratulations on the job well done, Rob!

19. Who wrote this dribble?

Windows 7 Juggernaut, hahaha, if it's at all possible to smerk larger than you have ever smerked before, I just did it!!

18. Seriously? You don't think normal users will appreciate that their existing mac wil become faster? And Mac OS X also got some new interface/function-things. It's not like Windows 7 has too many of those. Apple refreshed Exposé, stacks, interface of QT X, safari, and some other stuff. Windows 7 has a "new" start meny or whatever it's called, and some features where you drag the windows to the side... new exposé covers almost all of that anyway.

And let's not forget technologies. Apples new OS X has a lot of new stuff under the hood. As all other versions of OS X got when they were released.

Windows 7 ain't even a service pack. It should be an update in Vista. In stead it's a new version. And it's not even the 7th version, it's 6,3 or something like that.

So I think OS X 10.6 is going to be great. Windows 7 has some cool stuff, but the new OS X also got them, plus much more.

Anyway.... there's a lot of stupid stuff in this article that i'm not even going to comment. I mean seriuosly, listen to yourself. It's not all logical: prizing? ehm yes it's "cheap".... they are not charging more, so why do you make such a big deal of it. You pay what you get, but this is still a great deal, with lots of new stuff that makes your computer better....

Oh, sorry I was not going to do that....

17. "... where it will inevitably be crushed under the wheels of the mighty Windows 7 juggernaut."

ah nice. I still remember the times where all these windows-useing dimwits anticipated the release of vista with the same enthusiasm - we all know the results.

just to clarify:

-almost all of the people I've helped with windows related problems have switched back to xp, since vista was to slow, not user friendly, and some software didn't even run properly on it, sometimes I had to turn off all these fancy graphical interface BS, so that the computers wouldn't crash 5 minutes after starting

-when vista was released, we tested it at the astrophysics department with pretty powerful machines and the results let us believe that it wouldn't take long for microsoft to collapse under its own flaws (unfortunately that still hasn't happened, yet)

and as for no improvements in the new os... are you kidding me? maybe imrpovements are required for windows, but mac os is a very stable system since release 10.3 (on which I'm still working, my ibook is now almost 5 years old, and still running as if it were new and I never even had to reinstall!) so when considering, that 10.4 and 10.5 were definite leaps forward, I'd say that the range of useful applications/GUI-toys is exhausted by now... and a perfect 64-bit implementation sounds really good (even ubuntu still has some problems with it) not to mention the increase of efficiency with open cl and grand central.. and the fact that os 10.6 is much smaller than 10.5 - wouldn't you say that this is a very positive sign? (or are you still waiting for redundancies, like the twentieth application to organize you stickies??)

I'd say that mac is now an adult program, compared to windows, which is still a teenager...

congrats to apple - cannot wait to test it myself

16. [quote]Oh, don't be such a smug ****. We're complaining about tone (and accuracy) of the article, not having a go at your beloved Microsoft.[/quote]

I could complain about your tone. Did I mention Microsoft? or any love towards them? I'm on the fruity side of computing and mobile world so hardly loved up with the big M. There are some valid comments against this article, but also some from people who would buy **** at £499 if it was wrapped nicely in an Apple box hence my previous comment.

There is a lot of high quality work thats gone into this update (as always), but I do agree with the article writer that this is a service pack.

An update that makes the OS better in terms of reliability and performance is not a bad thing, lets take MS as an example (I dont know of an Apple example to give).... Win Xp SP2. What a machine that became overnight.

Apple have done well in the past to distance themselves from the words 'service pack', probably because of how Microsoft's have dealt with updates, but this definately looks like one, and its not a bad thing to call it a service pack for Apple OSX.

15. Massive under the hood rewrite of many key technologies, new stuff (eg OpenCL, GrandCentral, QT-X etc), front end refinements, increased performance from existing hardware all for just $29 - sounds pretty darned good to me! Very happy thanks.

14. Service pack?

OSX 10.6 is a complete rewrite of the operating system and reduces the OS footprint by 6GB. It also completes the unified transition to 64bit. Microsoft even after its 3rd itteration is still unable to release a unified 64bit operating system. Instead they release 2 versions.

Not to mention the new tech in 10.6 OpenCL, and Grand central which will produce a much more efficient use of your hardwares power.

Having never read any of your previous articles I don't know whether you have written this article with general ignorance of the technology behind OSX or if this is just simple flamebait.

13. **** = t w a t

12. Oh, don't be such a smug ****. We're complaining about tone (and accuracy) of the article, not having a go at your beloved Microsoft.

11. Nothing like a good anti apple article to get the fanboys all worked up on a Tuesday afternoon. Keep up the good work :).

10. Craig - couldn't agree more. If OpenCL will turn my old ATI X1600 into a third (quite powerful) processor, alongside better dual core management and 64-bit, then it's very easy to sell. And it costs less than a RAM upgrade.

9. I've now posted a fuller response on my blog: http://bit.ly/4RqPM

Karl Hodge also responded on Flickr about an important point few are picking up: signs suggest Snow Leopard will run faster on older hardware than Leopard. So, for $30, you get the rough equivalent to a slight hardware bump. That is good value, and if this turns out to be true, that's also the selling point sorted.

8. Rob, mate, it's not often you miss the point but I think you have here. Frankly, there are already too many fancy features in OS X - I don't want or need any more. But for someone that does 3D graphics/rendering, having 64-bit across the board and OpenCL is a real game-changer. People are already writing OpenCL code into their apps for massive speed-ups, and I'll be able to access my entire 8GB RAM. Remember, it's not just grannies emailing their grandkids who use Macs - some of us do real work on them.

A faster, more stable, bloat-free OS for $30? Yes please.