Tracey Johnson
I am proudly a self-proclaimed techie, I try to stay up on the latest and greatest. I love all the Apple products and support the jet setter lifestyle to include all portable items such as: Mac laptops, Apple TV, ipods, itouch and all the applications. I can’t however convert to the iPhone because I am so in love with Blackberry smart phones. I have a constant internal battle as to if I should abandon my Blackberry ways and embrace the seemingly unlimited world of applications offered by the iPhone.
As much as I love technology, I don’t love running with the pack. Everyone is grabbing at the newest, latest and greatest; I have to somehow make it mine without being like everyone else. But it has become a full time job keeping track of the upgrades. Introducing Apple’s Snow Leopard available tomorrow, Friday, August 27th for the low, low cost of $25 on Amazon and $29 in the Apple stores, only until Monday, August 31st.
The question is do we “Mactized” individuals need this new application for our machines? I mean really I feel like my Sam’s Club Membership that is renewed annually or my membership dues in my professional societal Association because every year there is a new upgrade, a faster, better, smarter version of the original that came out last year. Does it make sense to run out and get it as soon as it comes out that year knowing that it will be drastically reduced when the newer model comes out? This is not just Apple but my beloved Blackberry Smart Phones have come a long way from the original and I must have each one!
Now we understand that the upgrades are faster, with more memory, more applications, better navigation etc, etc, but do we have to have it? Thanks to the Internet there have been many wonderful reviews on what we can expect from the Snow Leopard. The funny thing is that I was in the Apple store just yesterday customizing a new Mac for my Mother, installing iWork 08, getting Dr. Dre ear cans, external hard drives and such only to find out that the Snow Leopard doesn’t work for those with the Tiger operating system. That kicks it out for me. I have had my Mac for three years strong and loving it! It has never crashed, never glitched, never lagged, and never spammed. I have recorded music, edited movies, written books, crafted blogs, approved designs, oovoo’d, skyped, research and done everything I feel big and bad enough to do that supports my lifestyle occupation and my beautiful little black MacBook takes everything I dish out!
So when the new Macs came out I checked them with little interest. The new ipods came out I checked it with little interest, the new applications came out iWork 08, no interest. I am happily content with all the offerings of my Mac, the applications are perfect for me if anything I would love more memory but that works with all the external hard drives that I have. Now back to this Snow Leopard. Is it all that? I have done a little research to find out what the newbies are to this Snow Leopard:
This Snow Leopard is faster than it’s predecessor. What we experienced is the opening of applications are significantly faster and for those us that close and open applications throughout the day, opening them a second and third time, it opens in half the time.
The menu bar shows the date and time, which is excellent for bloggers and writers.
This new system adjusts the time clock on the Mac when changing time zones. For us jet setters that is a wonderful feature. Right now I am on the east coast with a west coast time showing on the desktop, which is quite annoying.
There is a ‘put back’ command that allows you to pull items out of the trash and restore them to your memory.
The track pad turns into a backlit touch screen
Within the iDVD application there is a youtube command built in!
There is Mac exchangeability between Mac’s address book (which I love), email, icalendar and your own contact management legacy software.
The Snow Leopard runs on Mac machines purchased since 2006, (yay! I made it), which is different from what the Apple Specialist told me in the store yesterday. See what a little research can do? The end result is this; if you have a Leopard operating system already the upgrade is definitely something you should consider. If you have a Tiger operating system then the investment for you will be $170 giving you all the new applications plus all the goodies in the Snow Leopard system. Either way it has my recommendation as a self-proclaimed techie!
Be on the look out for Microsoft’s new system that they have coming out a month from now entitled Windows 7, we will have to see how that one works when the time comes. Happy Retail Therapy!
