Marcel Winatschek

Snow Leopard

People have actual wars about operating systems now. Used to be religion, money, race—the basics. Now it’s which software you run, which somehow feels worse.

Snow Leopard launches tomorrow. Thirty euros for the sixth version of Mac OS X, and they’re doing midnight releases in some cities like it’s a Harry Potter premiere. I’m grabbing it.

Nothing revolutionary in the update. Just faster, smoother, everything a little more polished. The appeal is that it doesn’t ask you to think about it. No weird hiccups, no digging through broken settings, no sense of your computer fighting you while you work. You use it and move on.

I know how that sounds. Every Mac person says the same thing, convinced their choice is more enlightened than everyone else’s. Maybe it is. Probably not. But I do know I don’t want to spend time troubleshooting my operating system, and this does that, so thirty euros seems fair.