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Has anyone else noticed that Apple has charged your credit card for Snow Leopard? I checked my credit card today, and there was a temporary authorization for $10.24 from the online Apple Store (the cost of the upgrade DVD--I purchased a new Mac in June). To me this seems like a really good sign that it will ship soon. They usually don't charge credit cards until it ships. My guess is that we hear an announcement from Apple tomorrow!

That was a pre-authorization not the sale transaction. When you use a credit card for an authorization the retailer must request funds/see if the funds are available. They basically ask if the money is in the account and request a hold on the funds. Those funds are not immediately transferred. Some retailers, like a gas station, may request an authorization of a set dollar amount, say $75. So even if you do not want to purchase $75 worth of gas they put a hold on that amount. If you do not have $75 in the account you get declined before pumping the gas. If it clears, that $75 is put on hold. It stays in your account but you cannot use your credit card to use it.

After the money is put on hold they need to "close the batch" with your sale included. This tells the intermediary to tell your bank to send that money, or portion thereof, over to the intermediary (the banks do not talk to each other and this is a greatly simplified description of what really goes on). The intermediary then sends the money, minus service fees, to the retailer. The important thing to know is that the retailer can only do this when the product is shipped. They can put a hold on the funds but cannot request the funds be transferred (and this is a often used technique by people who lift credit cards or credit card numbers — test to see if there is money available and then withdraw the funds or use it at a site that might not have the most up-to-date security measures in place)until after they ship the purchased products. Anyway, you generally do not see the final transaction until a day or two after the submittal. Oh, and yes, there are more efficient and less expensive ways of doing all of this.

More to the point: Apple has to use that money or your bank will let it go after a certain amount of time. You may see another authorization at 30, 45, or 60 day internals. Still, this is not the final sale. The bottom line is that the pre-authorization is not iron clad proof that SL is shipping now or next week. Late September, October is as good a guess as any.
 
NOT TRUE; they can query the account, and charge ONE DOLLAR if they so desire-to check that the account exists and has funds in it;
99% of retailers do not charge at all until they are ready or are in the process to ship an item- Logic behind this?
Easy-if, at the time of mailing/shipping there are not the suffienct funds to "capture" or put a hold on-from your card-they dont release it for delivery, keep you in a que-ask you to check your card-and then if no result-you drop from the que;
I believe somewhere in APPLEs fine print-like many other places state that: your credit card will not be charged until time of delivery
I dunno-thats how we do it at Amazon.



in the past what has APPLEs lead time been for product release training?
I seem to recall as long as a week, as little as 2-3 days-or even the night before
 
They didn't, at the time I worked in a store for a Premium Reseller, and the iMacs we already had in stock were part of the up2date program. The ones that came later had Leopard discs in the packaging, but not installed.

Ah, now I remember. For a while the iMac boxes had tiger on the desktop but had the drop in DVDs for Leopard...it took some time before we started seeing Leopard boxes.

I know that Apple thinks different and all but I doubt they will try to change the calendar to give September 31 days for an OS Release (and a minor one at that).

See post 136...I guess nobody understood my sarcastic comment. Maybe I will edit it and put in a " :p ".
 
This made me laugh.

Training for what?

Its vitually Identical to snow leopard.

my oh my apple what you been doing for the last few years.

It makes you wonder what the point of Quick Time X?
well its obvious apple were embarrassed in what they had so they had to pad it out abit to even justify 29.99
 
The faster SL comes out, the faster we can get to 10.6.1 and .2

Yep, but if it was released last day of September it would be just as good as 10.6.3 released the same day. Point being the version number means nothing; for what it's worth, I feel dot-zero releases should be "good" to begin with. There's no magic in dot-one or dot-two.
 
This made me laugh.

Training for what?

Its vitually Identical to snow leopard.
Apple has changed some minor things like hard disks not showing up by default on your desktop and different behavior of Exposé. AppleCare needs to know this, so they can help people out when they'll call, and probably some will, to report their hard disks have disappeared or their Exposé 'isn't working like it should'.

If you even had taken a quick look on the screenshots Macenstein provided showing the actual training itself, you would've seen it's about minor things Apple changed in Snow Leopard. You're right it's almost identical, but not completely.

I just discovered Apple also asks their Apple Care staff to report issues with Snow Leopard. Free Q&A. So they can train their staff and the same time they gather knowledge about issues in Snow Leopard.
 
Yep, but if it was released last day of September it would be just as good as 10.6.3 released the same day. Point being the version number means nothing; for what it's worth, I feel dot-zero releases should be "good" to begin with. There's no magic in dot-one or dot-two.

Not if the DVDs have already been printed (which seems to be the general consensus).

But I agree with your last part.
 
This made me laugh.

Training for what?

Its vitually Identical to snow leopard.

close to but not totally identical. they train on the differences and refresh on the rest.

or would you rather the last time the training staff looked at any materials was when Leopard first released

for what it's worth, I feel dot-zero releases should be "good" to begin with.

and they are 'good'. but they won't be perfect. there are too many factors for Apple (or any company) to test them all before release. sometimes they need those early adopters to fill in the blanks.
 
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