Snow Leopard's Deep, Dark Secrets Revealed

Snow Leopard goes on sale tomorrow for $29 retail (or $25 on Amazon). If you have an Intel-based Mac and your daily software is compatible, there is little reason not to upgrade. Snow Leopard's snappiness™ alone is worth the upgrade. But that's not the only reason to consider an upgrade. Here are some lesser known things about Snow Leopard:

Snow Leopard includes some new anti-malware capabilities. While it only protects against two files at the moment, Apple can and probably will upgrade this functionality to protect users from any number of files in the future. Technically, Sysadmins could also use this functionality to block users from installing software they didn't want users to install.

The Snow Leopard "Upgrade Disk" isn't really an upgrade disk. It is a full install and can not only be applied to Leopard, but it can be applied to machines without an OS. If you install a new hard drive, for instance, you won't need to have an OS running or install Leopard and then Snow Leopard.

I can say right here, if you've ever had to reinstall a Microsoft OS, you know this is a fantastic feature that will save you hours and hours.

As Walt Mossberg says, you "can" update Tiger with a $29 Snow Leopard disk. You also "can" just download it off a torrent for free. Both are in violation of Apple's license agreement. Point is: Apple's EULA states that if you run Tiger, you need to buy the Box set to upgrade. $150 is still less than Windows is charging for 7 updates - plus you get iWork and iLife thrown into the package.

If you run Tiger, or even Leopard, you'll need to upgrade your iLife to '08 or '09. A lot of Tiger users won't have had done this so even more reason to buy the Snow Leopard box set.

Even though most mainstream applications work beautifully with Snow Leopard, a surprising number of lesser known apps don't work. If you are an audio engineer using Pro Tools, you'll be used to waiting. If you are a MacSpeech 1.4 user, you'll need to be upgrading. Cyberduck FTP will also need an upgrade.

Snow Leopard will check your IP address and adjust your timezone based on your IP. Nice touch, but hopefully when I connect to to corporate VPN in Los Angeles from London, the OS doesn't decide to change me to Pacific time. I haven't had this issue yet.

There is a new auto-correct across all Apple applications in Snow Leopard that works similarly to Microsoft Word's auto-correct. Now my iChat will has correct grammar...hopefully.

Quicktime X has a number of feature upgrades including direct to Youtube publishing and video screengrabbing that come in handy pretty quickly. Also Perian works for Quicktime X, allowing AVIs and other not native supported files to be used in Quicktime.

Part of Snow Leopard's 6GB of "triming the fat" is its default of only installing printers nearby. That is great and even better is that new printers will install automatically when they are plugged in or found on the network. However, if you aren't plugged into the network, you need to go old fashion and install the drivers manually.

Overall, this is a worthy upgrade, just for the faster Mac it gives you. The bonuses above make it all the more of a "no-brainer"...if your apps are ready.