UPDATED: Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard Ships Friday, Aug. 28!
UPDATE: Official press release from Apple: Apple to Ship Mac OS X Snow Leopard on August 28
The Apple Store is back up, and as expected it’s brought the next generation of Mac OS X, 10.6 Snow Leopard, with it! Pre-ordering is now available for delivery by this Friday, August 28 in the US (international stores may only ship by 8/28).
At $29 for single user and $49 for a 5-user family pack, for Mac users, this is likely a no-brainer. We’re not sure what, if any, goodies will be in there specific to the iPhone of iPod touch, but with OpenCL (use GPU as CPU), Grand Central Dispatch (packetize processor tasks like network traffic), built-in Exchange ActiveSync support, QuickTime X, and a whole heap of refinements under the hood (hello, Cocoa Finder!), it’ll be worth it anyway. Find out more at Apple.com.
For everyone else, worry not, Windows 7 is still on track for October 22, Ubuntu Karmic Koala is set for October 29, and if you rock a different distro… well, you’ll likely have an update at some point too!
August 24th, 2009 at 7:57 am
Just ordered mine, $29.00 plus free shipping WOOT WOOT!!
August 24th, 2009 at 8:21 am
y Windows 7 sooo late…thought that was Apples niche…:-)
August 24th, 2009 at 8:23 am
it says for delivery friday, not ships on friday!
August 24th, 2009 at 8:31 am
Dang, Canada store says ships by 8/28. Shafted compared to the US again! (Updated)
August 24th, 2009 at 8:34 am
Ordered mine! $50 for family 5 pack?? I knew it before, but thats nuts! Thanks Apple!
August 24th, 2009 at 8:40 am
Just placed my order, £25 in the UK. Can’t wait!
August 24th, 2009 at 8:40 am
Wow that’s great news. Expected September release? Guess again.
August 24th, 2009 at 8:43 am
Snow Leopard Family Pack == Ordered! Checks mail drop D’oh! Checks again D’oh! *Checks–
August 24th, 2009 at 8:45 am
Just ordered mine, $9.95 baby!!!
August 24th, 2009 at 8:48 am
Everyone must be ordering it straight from Apple. The entire sight is moving hella slow for me right now.
wOOt Windows 7!
August 24th, 2009 at 8:52 am
@Greg Foster Congrads on your newish Mac. For a second I about freaked that you got it for 9.95.
August 24th, 2009 at 9:10 am
I freaked out when they told me I could get it for $9.95! I upgraded to a macbook pro, my old powerbook g4 just died about a month ago. She took a pretty bad fall back in December.
August 24th, 2009 at 9:19 am
Looks like i’ll be splashing $39 on my copy at the Doncaster Apple Store in Melbourne, Australia on Friday. Good on ya Apple for pushing the release forward!
August 24th, 2009 at 9:42 am
Thank you Mac Mini $9.95!!!!!
August 24th, 2009 at 9:52 am
MINE!
August 24th, 2009 at 11:19 am
I’m new to the Macbook scene. I’m assuming I should perform a clean install, is Mac OSX technologically advanced enough to perform a upgrade without leaving bugs and problems behind. I’ll google it in a minute, but can someone point me to a good reference I can use for upgrading or changing my OS from 10.5 to 10.6?
Thanks
August 24th, 2009 at 11:33 am
@Rene
My US Store order also says ships by August 28th — perhaps the $10 up-to-date orders are prioritized behind full fare purchases, or perhaps Apple is just being cautious on date promises.
August 24th, 2009 at 12:02 pm
Sweet – and with FreeBSD 8.0 is on it’s way soon…client and server updates! Fun all around.
August 24th, 2009 at 12:31 pm
One-click : )
August 24th, 2009 at 12:33 pm
I’m surprised… not one “forget Snow Leopard, give us MMS” post yet.
August 24th, 2009 at 1:28 pm
@ Rod
Apple has this down to a science. Not to worry, nothing at all like Windows XP “upgrade”.
August 24th, 2009 at 3:29 pm
About to order mine. They’re offering a bundle pack including I Work’s/Life 09 with Snow Leopard 10.6 for 169. Is it worth it or should i stick to just Snow Leopard?
August 24th, 2009 at 4:19 pm
@Jersagfast, @Rod
Not entirely true. The last big point upgrade, Leopard (10.5.0) had a couple issues, including one with audio that, IIRC, was not fully corrected for a couple of point revisions. That said, 10.6.0 testers have been very positive to date, and, while I would not install 10.6.0 on a mission critical OSX server, I have already pre-ordered and will apply it to my Macbook Pro as soon as it arrives.
August 24th, 2009 at 4:40 pm
I don’t understand why pay for an update?? So u guys pay for bug fixes. That’s totally unacceptable. I will never pay for a software update. Apple is really a ripoff. Windows is a onetime purchase only. Than ur good for ten years. U guys should install windows 7 on ur macs.
August 24th, 2009 at 7:29 pm
Can someone summarize the benefits of upgrading (to a new Mac user, former PC). Don’t know enough about Mac OS to know what to look for.
August 24th, 2009 at 7:44 pm
@CJ
We’re not paying for an update, not in the sense that you are saying. We’re not paying to have “bug fixes” and “patches.” This is an enhancement to the (already) great OS. Apple sends out patch updates, etc just like Microsoft does.
August 24th, 2009 at 8:32 pm
@ Fassy
Thanks for the update, my bad..
August 24th, 2009 at 9:45 pm
@CJ:
using your logic, Microsoft will hand out free Windows 7 to every Vista user?
yea right, Win7 will cost at least $200 for upgrade edition.
Snow Leopard is a new OS version, not a Service Pack lol
August 24th, 2009 at 11:02 pm
Not to be a ****, but isn’t this the “iPhone” blog? I didn’t realize it was an Apple blog. Just saying.
August 25th, 2009 at 4:02 am
@dday that is being a ****. this info is newsworthy for a quick post on any apple/iPhone blog.
I can’t wait for Snow Leopard, especially to get 6 GBs of space back and the fresh OS.
August 25th, 2009 at 7:25 pm
JES… i pre ordered mine today 9.95 with my new iMac … Sweet !!!
August 26th, 2009 at 1:06 am
To Greg and Bolt: Let me do a quick recap. what you get with this update is *improvements to the stability and speed of your OS (maybe they should have done this when they first released the OS) I’d call it this some type of bug fix or code improvement. Shouldn’t it be free??? *New quicktime X??? lol what???? it should be freeeeeeeee *OpenCL improvements ???? make your damn videocards work better with the OS. wow???? *Support for Microsoft Exchange???? are you HIGH???. *64bit addressing????? (built-in applications have been rebuilt to leverage the 64-bit addressing space) that looks like a failure end product fix to me (bug fix????).
And That’s it??? nothing else??? you guys drop 30 buck for this???. you guys are insane. that totally is a service pack update. which should be free. Thats not even a service pack actually because on service packs you get a lot more ****. Get Windows 7 please. That thing is a beast. Or even better google some torrents and get it free because Apple doesn’t deserve getting paid for this ****.
August 26th, 2009 at 5:16 am
@CJ:
Please don’t get me started on Windows ROFL. been there, done that. I have real work and need a RELIABLE solution.
If you really have faith in Windows 7, good for you, but I’m not dropping ~$500 (full edition home basic/premium/business/Ultimate/Super Ultimate?/etc… lol) for that POS.
Please tell me what does Win7 offers over Vista? improvements to the stability and speed? DirectX improvements? new Windows Media Player? lol. yea yiu must be overdosed to get that for ~$300 (upgrade ed).
I mean really? some people still argue for Windows? I guess its better getting stuck to something dull and inefficient than learning something new that works.
August 26th, 2009 at 8:09 am
lol wow Bolt makes a good point but CJ is right this software should be free over the internet as an update. I gotta older Mac Pro from 2004 that runs on Power PC not Intel chips, u think it will work.
August 26th, 2009 at 8:11 am
*G5 to be exact not mac pro sorry lol
August 27th, 2009 at 12:50 am
At Chuck: thank u Chuck for hearing what I have to say. My point is as I go into the store and I buy my pc I know that that is the only time I’ll have to spend money on it. Not even mentioning the staggering difference in hardware performance versus price when comparing macs vs pc. I know that when I pay that $1000 that is the only money that is comming out of my pocket. I am not responsible for incopetent work lazy apple engineers who do not properly test their software. These ppl should not expect the public to pay for their mistakes and don’t get me wrong they are mistakes that should have been remedied as software release. U ppl should sue.
Please don’t fall victim to snappy catch frases thought up by Apple marketing department. By buying apple ur falling pray to the myth of a reliable os that doesn’t crash when in fact said os cannot do much more than ms word and look pretty.
August 31st, 2009 at 12:27 pm
just installed my copy of Leopard and it gave me back 17GB of HD! They only said 6 and I got back 17! Awesome!! AWESOME!