“Apple’s 10.6 release – aka Snow Leopard – faces even more than the usual challenge. It’s an important engineering release that isn’t being sold on features – because there aren’t really that many new ones. It also leaves behind Macs as recent as three years old – it will only install on Intel hardware,” Andrew Orlowski reports for Register Hardware. “And Leopard now works so well, many will wonder why they should risk things at all?”

“Consequently, Snow Leopard has got a price to match: just $29/£25 for a single-user upgrade from 10.5,” Orlowski reports.

“I’ve been using a release candidate cut of the OS, and found plenty to like. Whizz-bang features are thin on the ground, but it’s undoubtedly faster and more responsive than its predecessor,” Orlowski reports. “And despite radical under-the-hood changes, such as the move to 64-bit and a new scheduler, it provides excellent compatibility.”

“I like Snow Leopard, and found moving back to Leopard quite surprisingly painful,” Orlowski reports. “Was it really so slow? It didn’t feel so a week ago.”

Orlowski reports, “By setting expectations low for its successor, and with a price to match, I’m sure a lot of people are going to be pleasantly surprised. If performance matters, it could be $29/£25 very well spent.”

The full article, which contains seven pages of screenshots and initial impressions of Mac OS X Snow Leopard, is here.