I think I'm scared....

Programs have broken on new Windows versions just the same. Apple has no control over 3rd party software. All that is needed is that the developers update the programs and this is happening as we speak. At the moment the only program I use that doesn't work on SL is USB Overdrive, with a new version coming in a few days. Otherwise no problems with SL on my brand-new MBP 13"

Well. On my early 2008 Macbook, SL works like a dream.
The only things wrong is:
No printer drivers for my printer
A Quicklook plug-in doesn't work. (not surprising, last update for the plugin was 2007)
A few Apps I don't use anyway didn't work in SL.
A few minor bugs (Expose could do with smoothing out) but its by far better then Leopard. Finder, Preview and Safari are much faster now.and the new additions are really nice.

though, I'll never understand why people bootcamp windows as well. Unless its for games. That, I do understand. Though every boot camp I done broke, due to windows saying I had an invalid key or something.

As with EVERY release of Mac OSX so far, 3rd party apps do get broken, there is incompatibilities when the OS first comes out... Everyone goes crazy on the forums over the littlest of things, and any apps that don't work now, will work next week (when most devs push out updates).

Of note, Quicksilver preferences pane didn't work for me, the devs pushed out an update yesterday I think, all is fixed, 6 days after Snow Leopards release...

Just because an app has an incompatibility now, doesn't mean it's broken forever... This happens with every release of Mac OSX and whilst most veteran users have learnt to just be patient and wait out for the devs to catch up, most newbie users (for whom this is their first upgrade) love to rant and rave about how "Everything is broken, this is the worst Mac OSX EVER!" and how they'll switch back to Windows if Apple doesn't fix this immediately...

Moral of the story, learn to have patience and realise that developers are only human... If you don't want to install just yet, wait it out till the 10.6.1, once that comes out, it's safe to say all the 3rd party devs would've updated their apps by then.

RedRaven571 said:

with all the horror stories here (and I understand that forums like these tend to amplify the issues 'cause that's why people post), I'm a little skeptical of installing it when it arrives.

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Then don't install it. If you lived in a cave and had no knowledge of 10.6 you'd be perfectly content right now. Go about your merry way until 10.6.1

I really don't understand why the zombie mac community always feels they need their peers to talk them into doing something they don't really need to do right away - for no reason other than to say they did it.

Schtumple sounds quite correct. Despite this being my first upgrade. I know that stuff is going to be broken. I expected more buggyness and brokeness and non working Apps. This is because of Vista, which I had to set a machine with that on last year.

For one thing, I'll never go back to Windows. I only play games and sort the machines out. And I cringe and get stressed every time I use one.

For almost any major OS, stuff will not work. Its a fact. Code changes, even slightly, and stuff gets broken because of it. Updates fix these things.

And compared to any another OS I've had to set up (XP, Vista, And Leopard) This has gone, by far, the best. Apple did very well to make sure most stuff will continue to work. And they shaved about 7GB of space.

Snow Leopard has some tweaks over Leopard, but there's nothing revolutionary about it and there is certainly no reason to jump into the upgrade. I predict that, if you install SL, you won't see any difference in the way your computer works.

It's fine to wait. But if you have full backups and your Leopard install discs, you'll always have a Plan B. Snow Leopard won't cause your computer to burst into flames or kill your puppy. The very worst that could happen is that you'd have to revert back to Leopard, which would mean time.

Hmac said:

Snow Leopard has some tweaks over Leopard, but there's nothing revolutionary about it and there is certainly no reason to jump into the upgrade. I predict that, if you install SL, you won't see any difference in the way your computer works.

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64-bit underneath is a tweak? Its completely different. Any 64-bit App can run in 64-bit even if your still booted in 32-bit.
Most of the Apple Apps, Like Safari, Finder and Preview are now 64-bit, and a lot faster. they shaved 7GB off of the OS. It feels slightly faster all over the system. Expose has changed slightly. new Quicktime. Preview PDF and Video files right in preview without Quicklook.
changed how Finder calculates the size. From GiB to GB, so it calculates PROPERLY now.
All in all, A bit more then "Tweaks". Have you got SL?

RedRaven571 said:

No offense meant but I always understood that what makes a Mac OS super stable is the fact that Apple controls the hardware and the software (vs. MS OS going on all kinds of hardware); what happened here? With all the broken programs and hardware issues reported, it sounds like SL may be Apple's Vista. **This is not intended to be inflammatory**

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If you think of incompatibility issues with initial releases as curves, the curve for Windows is kind of flat. Software works or it kind of works after a system upgrade. Drivers work or they kind of work. Vista was a severe case because Windows revamped the driver model for the first time in ages, but in cases like going from 2000 to XP or Vista to Win7, when there are no major surprises in the underpinnings, everything either works or kind of works.

With Mac it's more like, the closer to the system something is, the less likely it is to survive an OS update. Regular applications usually work fine and handle the transition without any glitches, but stuff like system extensions, codecs, drivers, anything that drills into the system a little bit, will often break. In the Tiger>Leopard transition there were some ridiculously serious ones that caused the system to hang on a perpetual blue screen on startup... I can't remember what it was, but I think it involved the DivX codec, and possibly the Logitech Control Center. Unfortunately this breakage sometimes continues when Apple release their many point upgrades (10.5.1, 10.5.2 etc) and I'm not sure why. It will sometimes happen with Windows Service Packs too, but those are released like once a year so what little breakage there is in 3rd party stuff is more manageable.

Having said that, SL doesn't seem anywhere near as problem ridden as Leopard was initially. I took a stab at upgrading my MBP to SL without doing a clean install, and it's been working fine. Stuff that didn't work (such as Logitech Control Center and the WD Drive Manager) didn't bring the system down this time, it was simply ignored or disabled. I'm not going to vouch for SL because others have been reporting some pretty disastrous issues, but for me personally the upgrade went much more smoothly than I could have dreamed of. I can get by without LCC, in fact I probably won't install Logitech's initial attempt at SL compatibility because, well, their software sucks (their hardware rocks).

To the OP - have you and so you abck up your files regularly?

If no, then you're worrying about he wrong thing. And if you do, and don't have mission critical programs on the mac that are known o have incompatabilities, i wouldn't be too scared to move to SL.