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Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Software, Snow Leopard

Snow Leopard: In EULA we trust


Just before the release of Snow Leopard, Uncle Walt Mossberg did the unthinkable by writing that the $29 Leopard upgrade:
"will work properly on ...Tiger equipped Macs, so you can save the extra $140."
We reported that as well but didn't have all the facts verified at the time. Gizmodo likened Walt to a pirate and guessed that he'll have to apologize or at least clarify his position.

Now, after buying the family edition, I have done every sort of installation known to man and have the facts. It seems that Walt was right, but he didn't tell you the whole story. You can take the $29 upgrade disc and install it over Leopard, over Tiger, or over a freshly formatted hard drive. The disc doesn't care. Regardless of whether you pay $29, $49 or $169, you get the same disc with the same capabilities.

But just because you have a disc, if you use it for a purpose not intended upon purchase, you are breaking your agreement with Apple. The contents of the disc are the property of Apple and how that intellectual property is to be used is determined by the EULA (End User License Agreement) that you agree to before installation.

For each method of purchase the EULA is different. For the $169 package which includes iLife '09 and iWork '09 this is what you agree to:

"A. Single Use License. Subject to the terms and conditions of this License, unless you have purchased a Family Pack or Upgrade license for the Apple Software, you are granted a limited non-exclusive license to install, use and run one (1) copy of the Apple Software on a single Apple-branded computer at a time. You agree not to install, use or run the Apple Software on any non-Apple-branded computer, or to enable others to do so. This License does not allow the Apple Software to exist on more than one computer at a time, and you may not make the Apple Software available over a network where it could be used by multiple computers at the same time."

Clear enough. You can use it on one computer. It doesn't say that you need any operating system to start with. I would assume that you can put it on as many hard disks as you want, as long as you only use those hard disks with one specified computer.

Continue readingSnow Leopard: In EULA we trust

Filed under: Snow Leopard

The $29 Snow Leopard upgrade: usable for 10.4 Intel Macs as well?


Walt Mossberg has answered a Snow Leopard upgrade question that has been on just about everyone's mind.

Do you need the full $169 box set if you are upgrading from Tiger? The answer is apparently no, not exactly, although that is what's required by Apple's EULA. You will be able to install the $29 individual upgrade or $49 family upgrade on any Intel Mac regardless of whether it's already running Leopard. According to Uncle Walt, as posted on the All Things Digital site:

"Apple concedes that the $29 Snow Leopard upgrade will work properly on these Tiger-equipped Macs, so you can save the extra $140."

What's not 100% clear from this report is whether the Snow Leopard install would work as an upgrade, or only as a clean install (on a newly formatted drive), as Lifehacker suggests. Since some experienced Mac users prefer to do a clean install with every major OS upgrade -- either reinstalling apps and files from backup, or using Migration Assistant to pull over from the old configuration -- this may not be a drawback for everyone. Wired's preview of Snow Leopard (based on a pre-release version of the OS) suggests that they were able to do an upgrade install from 10.4 straight to 10.6 using the conventional SL disc, but your mileage may vary.

So there you have it. If you have Leopard running on your Intel machine, you will be fine with the $29 single or $49 family versions on sale Friday morning. If you're willing to wipe down your Tiger install and start fresh, the $29 installer will probably work for you too -- but you'll be in violation of Apple's licensing agreement, making you an OS pirate. Just so you know.

Filed under: Features, Troubleshooting, Ask TUAW

Ask TUAW: More migration, expanding Apple's Dictionary, syncing iPhone notes, and more

Welcome back to Ask TUAW, our weekly Mac troubleshooting Q&A column! This time we've got more questions on migrating user data when upgrading to Snow Leopard, expanding Apple's built-in Dictionary application, accessing iPhone notes without Mail.app, and more.

As always, your suggestions and questions are welcome. Questions for next week should be left in the comments. When asking a question please include which machine you're running and which version of Mac OS X (we'll assume you're running Leopard on an Intel Mac if you don't specify). And now, on to the questions.

Continue readingAsk TUAW: More migration, expanding Apple's Dictionary, syncing iPhone notes, and more

Filed under: Leopard

Leopard: Should you upgrade?

Last night, during our weekly podcast, we ended up having quite the heated discussion about whether people should upgrade to Leopard now or not. In the end, we pretty much all ended up agreeing that many people should not. Here are a few of the points brought up.

If you have only one computer and it's your production machine, don't upgrade. The 10.5 upgrade is a big one--not a small update, not a few bug fixes. Lots of stuff gets broken and if you need to keep getting your work done, just wait. Let a few dot releases ease things out.

If you work with Adobe software and need your software to work reliably, don't upgrade. Apple didn't get its gold master out to third party developers in time for the upgrade path to proceed smoothly. Everything was rush, rush, rush. Developers simply did not have the time to work with the final product and make sure their apps would be compatible. If you need Acrobat (and I do) or In Design, you need Tiger. Don't upgrade to Leopard.

If you work with Windows, don't upgrade. Windows networking isn't working so good, according to several of our panelists who need to connect to Win machines on a regular basis.

If you have a lot of system customizations, don't upgrade. Many customizer tools like APE (application enhancer) are broken with the Leopard upgrade. You can do a clean Leopard install but you probably don't want to upgrade at this time.

So what do you do if you really want to give Leopard a spin? I recommend dual booting. Keep your Tiger installation now for the real work and add a Leopard partition to play.

Tip of the Day

Use Spotlight as a reference tool. Type any word in the Spotlight box and one of the top entries will be a definition. Click on it, and it will bring up the dictionary application to check the word in either the dictionary, thesaurus, Apple database, or Wikipedia.


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