It’s official: Leopard goes on sale Oct. 26
Confirming rumors that have circulated for several weeks, Apple this morning finally issued a press release announcing that Mac OS X Leopard will indeed go on sale Friday, Oct. 26 at 6 p.m. and that Apple’s online store now is accepting pre-orders (though Amazon.com has been accepting pre-orders since June.)
Also confirmed is Leopard’s minimum CPU of an 867 MHz G4 or better, which includes all G5 Macs and all the newer Intel-based Macs, but excludes a lot of iMacs and PowerBooks from a few years ago. See Apple’s system requirements page for more specifics.
In addition to reiterating all of Leopard’s previously announced features, such as Stacks and Time machine, the release throws in a quote from Steve Jobs that includes a swipe at Windows Vista’s multiple versions and pricing levels: “Leopard, the sixth major release of Mac OS X, is the best upgrade we’ve ever released. And everyone gets the ‘Ultimate’ version, packed with all the new innovative features, for just $129.”
The Family Pack, which allows users to install Leopard on up to five Macs in one household, is $199, the same as Tiger before it.
But what about people who just bought a new Mac last week? Here’s the deal, straight from the press release: “The standard Mac OS Up-To-Date upgrade package is available to all customers who purchased a qualifying new Mac system from Apple or an Apple Authorized Reseller on or after October 1, 2007 for a shipping and handling fee of $9.95 (US).”
That means if you bought a shiny new Mac on Sept. 30, tough bananas. You get to pay $129 like everyone else. This actually is a slight improvement over previous OS upgrades -- only people who bought after the official announcement were eligible for the Up-To-Date discount. I still think Apple should extend the program to customers who bought new Macs 60 or even 90 days before a new version of OS X is announced, but I suppose we should applaud the extra two weeks this time around as progress.
The only other question remaining now is the one I asked in a post last week: how well will Leopard run on older PowerPC-based Macs? Reader responses to that post, including several from folks running developer releases of Leopard, indicated that older PowerPC Macs like my 867 Quicksilver run Leopard about as well as Tiger. Apparently the key is not the CPU but the GPU, the graphics card. Because successive versions of Mac OS X have pushed more and more of the eye candy to the graphics card, that plays a greater role than the CPU in how well Leopard will run on your Mac.
We’ll find out for certain on Oct. 26.
Comments
I really hate all the articles published which are full of doubts and misgivings and just play it safe, non-committal nonsense.
In the Media, there are few people left, who are honest, opinionated, have the balls to stand up for their opinions and once they do their research, write articles with honest facts and write and defend their opinions.
There is no use and no respect for the carefully worded, double meaning, non-committal mish-mash, which is what most published articles are in magazines.
I give no respect to those, who cannot state their opinions and beliefs, just to save their fanny and paychecks, because by not taking sides and positions, they could not be proven wrong.
I am not religious and this has nothing to do with religion, only illustrates that a human being can accomplish a lot when he is brave and tells it as he feels and thinks.
Jesus could not be remembered today, if he would have played safe and towed the line. Galileo, Magellan, Columbus are also good examples who had "balls"! Try to have at least one!
Posted by: Gyula Bognar, Jr. | October 17, 2007 10:27 PM
Leopard will be an awesome upgrade! Lots of exciting new features. And a better Finder to boot.
Posted by: Neil Anderson | October 20, 2007 2:19 PM