Joining the ranks of Early Adpoters
I did something different yesterday. After school, I walked to the local Next Byte store, and purchased Snow Leopard (the latest Apple operating system – released that very morning). Why is this different for me? I have never purchased an operating system on it’s first day of public availability. Never.
However, something inside me told me that I should go and get this upgrade as soon as possible. After all, I hadn’t upgraded to Leopard, and was still running Tiger. I also thought it would be worth upgrading to a 64 bit operating system.
The installation went well. The whole thing was finished before I could read a few articles in the latest Audio Technology (they have a good review on headphones, by the way). Very smooth, and much more streamline than any Windows installations I have ever performed (and I’ve done that a fair few times!).
The advantages I have received over using Tiger are numerous. I can see the small speed difference between the 64 bit apps and the old 32 bit apps. I love the new dock, the refined finder and better networking. Hey, even the Exchange supports makes me want to setup my own Exchange server!
Sure, many of the features I have benefited from would have been there by just upgrading to Leopard ages ago. However, I never actually used Leopard – while I didn’t see any problem with it, but it was still the OS which I never used. That’s just how it worked.
Do I regret being an early adopter of Snow Leopard? Not yet. And I don’t think I will. It’s been smooth sailing so far, and I expect it to stay that way. After all, Macs are renowned for being no-nonsense, and just getting the job done.
If you have an Intel Mac with Tiger, you should really be thinking about upgrading. In fact, don’t think about it; just do it. The upgrade is painless, and well worth it. If you get the box set, you even get iLife 09 and iWork 09 – it’s a wise investment.