leopardI’ve been following all of the Apple buzz lately around their fresh new OS 10.6 Snow Leopard.  I’ve been just as excited as everyone else about upgrading my MacBook Pro to the new cat, but is it time?

Apple’s claims for this new OS are:

1) Better, Faster, Easier
2) Next-Generation Technologies
3) More Accessible than ever
4) Exchange Support

Lets take a look at these one at a time.

1) Better, Faster, Easier – Really?

To start things off, I get it.  Snow Leopard is the first MacOS to support 64-bit which is the next best thing to come along.  Apple even claims that it is up to 50% faster.  But is it?  A recent article I read shows that on my system (2.6GHz Intel Core 2 Duo, 4GB Ram, early 2008 MacBook Pro) the speed results are around a 4% increase.  4%!?  That’s all?  Sure, that technically is faster but just last week I cleaned my system up and saw at least that much of an increase just based on running maintenance scripts and cleaning up my applications folder.  This doesn’t make me that inclined to upgrade for a negligible amount of performance increase.

2) Next-Generation Technologies

Again, this is tapping into that 64-bit technology of the new OS but there’s one problem, the majority of Apple owners don’t have that technology yet.  Me included.  Also, there are a lot of programs and menu items that I use which aren’t supported under Snow Leopard (Just check out the list!) which would kill my day to day productivity.  Simple things even like Flash were messed up by the upgrade to Snow Leopard.  So I understand Apple trying to future-proof themselves with this new release but it seems like it is causing more problems than good at this point.  It is almost comparable to the nightmarish Vista upgrade which left a lot of users in the dust as far as hardware and software were concerned.

3) More Accessible Than Ever

Apple states that Snow Leopard  “includes a range of assistive technologies and features that help people with disabilities experience what the Mac has to offer. Now innovations in Snow Leopard advance accessibility even further.” Not to be blunt, but I don’t need these anyway.  I can certainly see the value in it if you’re a person who needs this kind of assistance.  For me though, that is 25% of the upgrade value lost.’

4) Exchange Support

I see why Apple added this feature because now this will be the single most important factor in helping them EXPLODE into more businesses.  In the past, this has really been the only thing limiting companies to adopt the more stable Apple platform and bite the bullet when it comes to cost vs. maintenance.  Again though, I don’t use it.  Add this to the accessibility increases and that’s 50% of the upgrade value in this product, lost.

Overall I can see why Apple wanted to get this release out there.  It will create more opportunity for them with corporate America and ultimately prepare them to move forward into the next technology upgrades in new systems down the road.  Applications that are being developed on the 64-bit platform are pretty amazing and will no doubt be game changers in the future, but they’re not here yet.  Yes, I realize that it was a cheap upgrade (for most only costing $29) to which others tell me “stop you’re whining, it’s cheap”.  Maybe a few months down the road when all of my favorite applications have caught up with Snow Leopard or in a year when I drop the cash for a new system, I’ll upgrade, but for the headaches that it would cause me to upgrade, I’m staying with good old Leopard for now.