How much do you value Snow Leopard

[darwinian]

With the features we're assuming are going to be included in SL, how much would you pay for the upgrade?

Has a poll on this been done before? My LazySearch™ didn't turn up anything obvious, though obviously this topic has been brought up before.

 

[Sky Blue]

$129 + tax

 

[carfac]

Let me think.... Apple discount something. No. Does NOT happen. They will charge 129.00.

I will be skipping it, in all probability, too. Tuning the OS is fine and all.... but without a real "gee Whiz" factor, no way can I justify that at 129.00.

 

[SuperCompu2]

Free. Certainly not enough to justify a new release.

 

[Tallest Skil]

$129 + tax

$129 + tax.

Anyone thinking otherwise needs to shape up, now.

 

[darwinian]

Let me think.... Apple discount something. No. Does NOT happen. They will charge 129.00.

I will be skipping it, in all probability, too. Tuning the OS is fine and all.... but without a real "gee Whiz" factor, no way can I justify that at 129.00.

Yeah, so what would you be willing to pay for this? I'm about willing to pay an academic discount for this, so I'm not terribly bent out of shape about the $129 situation, though I do think they should do < $129, if for no other reason than marketing.

 

[nick9191]

$129 + tax.

Anyone thinking otherwise needs to shape up, now.

$129 + tax

 

[hacksaw-C87]

Should be less. Will be $129 + tax. Or, in other words, £130 of my British pounds. Glad that I still qualify for the academic discount. I value it quite highly, incremental performance improvements rank highly on my wish-list.

 

[ChrisA]

When it comes out I'll wait untill I here how well it works or if it's "buggy". Then if it solves a problem I have with Leopard I'll buy it. But from what I'm reading SN will mostly only provide features that developers can use. If so then SN is of no use to most people until there are applications that take actually use the new features.

At some point I will have to have SN if I want to use the new Apps. Then it will be worth upgrading.

Always the point of an OS is to run software. I'll run whatever OS makes the software work best.

 

[beige matchbox]

Given Leopard is currently £83 it seems likely Snow Leopard will be £80 - £90, which for a full OS upgrade is well worth it

 

[sidewinder]

Snow Leopard is of no use to most people until there are applications that actually use the new features?? What an ignorant statement!

Who would want an OS that was faster, took up less space, was more efficient, and laid the groundwork for much better multiprocessing, use of the graphics card GPU for general calculations, etc.?

What Apple is doing here is a much bigger change and significantly more work than what they did when going from Tiger to Leopard. Basically, they are going through the OS from the ground up so we don't have a base OS with a bunch of stuff tacked on to it. Snow Leopard is a clean slate.

Even though it is not a "feature" release, it will have plenty of new features and differences that will help the average user from the day it is installed. App developers will be releasing updated apps to take advantage of the new core technologies quickly as well.

S-

 

[darwinian]

I think ChrisA has a valid point from a user's perspective, one that I felt was valid on a lot of previous "feature-packed" OS upgrades.

Consider: Tiger works just fine on one's machine. Leopard (especially wireless) was awful from 10.5.0 until about 10.5.3 (yikes). Even after the bugs were worked out (10.5.3 SHOULD have been 10.5.0), was there an obvious incentive to move from Tiger to Leopard? Depends on which Leopard features one valued.

Now, if the feature set for Leopard only included things like sandboxing, DTrace, and CoreAnimation support throughout, then I think that the value statement is perfectly valid: the merit of these and many other features is not 100% obvious and often invisible for many end users. So many aspects of Leopard benefitted the developer, which is great for end users in the long run. Happier developers with very easy to use tools means that more people are willing to write higher quality applications, which means that Mac is more useful, which means that users are more apt to stick with/switch to Mac. PS. The real value of Leopard was in those dev side features, in my opinion. While a few features such as QL are useful, most of the stuff they were selling (transparent menu bar, reflective 3D dock -- c'mon) was kind of silly.

The things you list, sidewinder, are undoubtedly beneficial to all of us (and I am personally giddy with excitement over SL), but we have to admit those things are pretty tough to sell in an age of already fast computers (faster), huge cheap storage (less space), already efficient (efficient), etc. etc.

Plus it's going to be hard for a lot of end users to justify an upgrade to SL with all the economy stuff going on.

I think it's obvious that it should not be free. I'm already sold that the work gone into it is massive. And we're not talking "things that should have already been in Leopard." We're talking major rewrites of various aspects of the OS from the kernel up.

I'm happy to pay for the upgrade -- but I really don't think that valuation of SL at $129 is going to be feasible without "features" that they can actively sell to their larger-than-ever existing user base, especially in this economy.

 

[numbersyx]

$129 + tax.

Anyone thinking otherwise needs to shape up, now.

We'll see. Not much in the way of features and a recession points to some reduction in price IMHO.

 

[BlizzardBomb]

Would be awesome if it was $99, but likely to be $129, which is OK if they redesign the UI and finally get round to putting in resolution independence.

 

[sidewinder]

The things you list, sidewinder, are undoubtedly beneficial to all of us (and I am personally giddy with excitement over SL), but we have to admit those things are pretty tough to sell in an age of already fast computers (faster), huge cheap storage (less space), already efficient (efficient), etc. etc.

Plus it's going to be hard for a lot of end users to justify an upgrade to SL with all the economy stuff going on.

I think it's obvious that it should not be free. I'm already sold that the work gone into it is massive. And we're not talking "things that should have already been in Leopard." We're talking major rewrites of various aspects of the OS from the kernel up.

I'm happy to pay for the upgrade -- but I really don't think that valuation of SL at $129 is going to be feasible without "features" that they can actively sell to their larger-than-ever existing user base, especially in this economy.

The last time I checked, performance is a feature. People will spend hundreds of dollars on hardware to get relatively small gains in performance.

I am not suggesting that everyone needs to go out an buy Snow Leopard when it comes out. Just don't sit back and suggest it should be free or cost very little because it doesn't have features you think one could use on the day of its release. That is what is ignorant.

S-

 

[FoxyKaye]

With Software Maintenance for our XServe, Snow Leopard will be "free" and I'll be grateful if it fixes the bugfest that's Leopard Server.

For workstations, it will cost what it costs, and I'll probably be grateful as well.

 

[Beric]

What "should" it cost? Around $30-$60. What *will* it cost? $129. And I wouldn't even consider it at that price. Especially as I have a Macbook with the GMA 950, and wouldn't get the graphics benefits, ect.

 

[Turmoil]

bout $129. I'm looking forward to the upgrade.

 

[yoppie]

It'll be $129.

What will I do? I'll be staying with Leopard since the rumors are that the Core Duo MacBook will not be supported.

Nah, I'll be getting a new mac.

 

[KingYaba]

Free upgrade (with proof) for those who purchased Leopard.

 

[chrismacguy]

There should be a free upgrade for everyone whose purchased an intel mac with leopard installed (as this is where the benefits are) ... however, that would basically mean free! But the only time Apple released an OS X upgrade for free was 10.1, where 10.0 had less features than OS 9 , so they needed to do it to get people to switch from classic to X.

 

[Cromulent]

We'll see. Not much in the way of features and a recession points to some reduction in price IMHO.

Sorry?

OpenCL is worth the upgrade on its own. Anyone claiming Snow Leopard has no new features is deluded.

 

[DoFoT9]

Sorry?

OpenCL is worth the upgrade on its own. Anyone claiming Snow Leopard has no new features is deluded.

and more! SL is probably one of the more serious and needed updates, because finally the software is being utilised instead of purely using the speed of the hardware. eventually hardware will stop advancing so far and software will need to be increased. i think it is very noble of apple making this decision.

 

[KettyKrueger]

Erm, depends on the final 'improvements' list.

We know it won't cost more than Leopard and it certainly won't cost more than any Windows OS.

I expect to pay £85 but in all honestly, I'd probably pay anything (dont listen Apple). It bugs me when I don't the latest version of anything

 

[numbersyx]

Erm, depends on the final 'improvements' list.

We know it won't cost more than Leopard and it certainly won't cost more than any Windows OS.

I expect to pay £85 but in all honestly, I'd probably pay anything (dont listen Apple). It bugs me when I don't the latest version of anything

I think that's right. It will depend on the addition of "features". If it is a "speed" update with nothing new on the features side, I think even Apple would think about selling it at a reduced price.