From the brave new world of Snow Leopard, you can look forward to smart new technologically up-to-date blogposts

This is the kind of dynamic new blogpost you can expect now that I've upgraded to Mac operating system OS 10.6, fun-named "Snow Leopard." Hey, what else can you get for 29 bucks these days?

Mac OS X Snow Leopard enhances your entire Mac experience. Faster, more reliable, and easier to use., it's the Mac you know and love made even better.

-- from the outside of the $29 Snow Leopard upgrade package

by Ken

We're celebrating Snow Leopard Day here at DWT.

So I snuck out of work this afternoon and, braving the rain, hied to one of the Manhattan Apple Stores (can you believe, I had never been inside an Apple Store before?) to pony up my $29 -- or rather throw down my credit card -- for the just-out-today new version of the Mac operating system, OS 10.6, with the fun name "Snow Leopard." This is the first upgrade to the Mac OS since, um, the last one. [Note to DWT research assistant: Please check and insert date.]

Sleek new Snow Leopard is not, of course, to be confused with that pathetic old relic of an operating system, OS 10.5, fun-named just plain "Leopard," or its even more antique forebears OS 10.4 ("Tiger") and OS 10.3 ("Panther"). I actually am a Tiger user at work, where I was only recently updated from that prehistoric fossil OS 9 to the promised land of OS X. Yes, it is officially "OS X," as if it were a Super Bowl. But the decimal iterations that have represented OS upgrades since the advent of OS X have used the arabic-numeral form "10." This is just one of the mysteries of the OS X universe. Personally, I've never liked any version of the system I've used, but then, I have no idea what's going on inside the computer, and I'm prepared to concede that OS X has made possible things that I actually benefit from.

But it's been a long times since I was a first-day software upgrader. Back in the day, of course, upgrades were offered dirt-cheap to the software user base, as a way the developers kept the faith with and of their faithful users. That's before it occurred to some marketing genius that your faithful users aren't loyalists to be cosseted but captives to be exploited. Software upgrades became more frequent and more expensive, not to mention more bloated and cumbersome. And now those existing users were the prime target market. I believe the technical term is "pigeons."

So it may be the mere fact that the Snow Leopard upgrade is being offered for only $29 is what hooked me after all. (Note that this upgrade is only for current Leopard users, and at that Leopard users whose computers use Mac's now-standard Intel processor chips. Heaven forbid should be a Mac-ophile from the hoary days of the Power PC chip. However, if you bought your Mac on or after June 8, under Apple's "up-to-date" program you can get the upgrade for $9.95.) But even I noticed that, while few new features are promised in the upgrade, there is one startling development: Instead of occupying still more of your hard-drive real estate, it actually takes less space. That's right, the installation promises to return usable drive space!

I see on apple.com that NYT computer columnist David Pogue, a guy I pretty much trust (from the days before he wrote for the NYT), has enthused over “the radical concept of a software update that’s smaller, faster and better -- instead of bigger, slower and more bloated," PC Magazine contributor Edward Mendelson, another really smart guy (and I do mean smart; "computer maven" is just a hobby for him -- he's a fairly brilliant scholar and literary critic, a professor of English and comparative literature at Columbia), has written on pcmag.com that Snow Leopard is “Apple’s fastest, most functional, and feature-rich operating system yet.”

Well, we shall see. No, I haven't installed it yet. On the way home, it occurred to me: What happens if something goes wrong? I'm committed to producing this 6pm (PT) post. That's not going to be so easy if my damned computer locks up and just blinks 12:00 at me. Oh wait, that's the VCR. Well, probably the computer would just stare defiantly at me. (Howie and I were talking about this just the other day. With advancing age I've lost my former eagerness, even cockiness with regard to hardward and software installations. I used to rip the package open on the way home, then race to the computer to put the new toy to work. Now I'm often filled with dread, having lost most of my confidence to make the thing work.)

So once I get this post posted, I'm going to rip the Snow Leopard package (a tiny little thing that fits in the palm of your hand) open and go for broke. And you, dear reader, will see the benefit. Starting tomorrow you're going to be seeing sleek new blogposts that will put those galulmphing old ones to shame. Or if not, you're welcome to use some of that extra space I'm going to be getting back after the installation.

UPDATE: INSTALLATION SUCCESSFUL

So far I can't tell any difference, but just give it some time and I'll bet I'll be blogging up a storm.

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