05-24-2011, 08:21 PM

Do you really need the osx snow leopard box set to upgrade from tiger? or can you get away with the normal osx snow leopard install disc.

My macbook is an intel 1.83ghz with 2gb ram.

Just want to be able to upgrade my itunes and back up my iphone

cheers

05-24-2011, 08:41 PM

Legally you do need the box set to upgrade from 10.4 Tiger. You can legally upgrade from 10.5 Leopard to 10.6 Snow leopard using the $29 SL DVD, but if you are running tiger, you are to use the Box Set.

05-24-2011, 10:56 PM

Not sure that it's a question of legality as EULAs have not been fully tested by the courts. But Apple does require you to use The Mac Box Set.

Basically, the $29 upgrade is intended for people that bought Leopard (10.5), because 10.6 was not really a "feature" release, but more of a performance refinement. So, Apple's intent was to encourage all Leopard owners to make the jump to Snow Leopard by keeping the price low.

There's another important consideration here and that's the iLife suite. If you're still on 10.4, you've likely got an ancient version of iLife (as well as other apps that are quite old and may be incompatible). So, my recommendation is to do the Box Set and get completely up-to-speed with a clean install - and as a side benefit, you'll get iWork as well.

Do shop around for the Mac Box Set. Companies like Amazon sell it for as low as $120, which is less than the typical OS X update (which usually runs around $129 *without* iLife and iWork). But if you're going to do it, do it VERY soon. 10.7 is just around the corner, which likely won't support some of the older Intel machines - and once Apple releases it, 10.6 will quickly disappear from stores. And even if you can upgrade, you can bet that 10.7 will be a full price upgrade.

05-25-2011, 06:56 AM

The $29 disc will work fine if you don't really want all the extras that come with the box set.