OS X updates

[beginner0]

Just a quick question, do they keep giving you updates to the OS once you bought it? Say if I wait until Leopard comes out and buy a mac that comes with that, I'll get all the updates after right?

 

[mkrishnan]

Just a quick question, do they keep giving you updates to the OS once you bought it? Say if I wait until Leopard comes out and buy a mac that comes with that, I'll get all the updates after right?

OS X versions have numbers like:

10.4.0 (this was the original release of Tiger)
10.4.1
10.4.2
...

10.5.0 (this will almost certainly be the original release of Leopard)
10.5.1
10.5.2
...

We often call the upgrade between 10.4.0 and 10.4.1 and so on "dot upgrades" (because it's the number behind the last dot that changes). We call the change from 10.4 to 10.5 to be a "major release" or a new "version" of OS X.

You get all the dot upgrades for your version. You almost never get a free version change. So if you buy a Leopard mac, any version of Leopard -- 10.5.1, 10.5.5, 10.5.8, etc -- that later gets release should be free. But the successor to Leopard -- whether it's "10.6" or "11.0" will not be free.

Does that make sense? The same is generally true of iLife also.

 

[displaced]

Just a quick question, do they keep giving you updates to the OS once you bought it? Say if I wait until Leopard comes out and buy a mac that comes with that, I'll get all the updates after right?

You'll get all the 'point releases' for Leopard (10.5.xx) free via Software Update, but you'll pay for the next major release (10.6.0) about 2 years or so after Leopard's release.

[d'oh! beaten by mkrishnan ... anyway, his description's much better ]

 

[beginner0]

Thanks. It was very clear.