Review by Rudy

Visually, for folks who mainly use the Mac for entertainment, this is a minor upgrade–frankly not worth the bother. But for folks who use OSX for its power, speed and reliability this is a very significant step forward. Most importantly, perhaps, is spreading the workload among cores in multi-core hardware and rewriting old workhorses like Finder for 64-bit code (although it still looks much like the Finder of yore). Snopard, at last, is meeting the computing potential of current hardware, and seems CPU-ready for the oft-promised but slow-in-coming powerful software that could take advantage of multicore hardware. For demanding users, this upgrade is well-placed and well-timed at an amazingly low price point.

Curiously, although BootCamp (for Windows cohabitation) has been upgraded as well - it mentions Vista compatibility - not a word on the forthcoming Windows-7 release - I’d wait till the dust settles on that issue with future updates. The upgrade went smooth as can be (except for a Canon printer needing new driver) and most applications like Apple iWork and the Adobe imaging line just kept on going; applications like Bento are explicitly Snopard-awarennA fabulous upgrade for serious Mac users, scientists, photographers and business people … but a non-event for media-craving entertainment use.