Lost his Marble

Adam C. Engst seems to think that Mac OS X 10.6 (aka Snow Leopard) will or should be free...or at least nearly free. Say, $9.95 for the DVD. His point mostly rests on the perfectly good notion of simultaneously dragging all the remaining Tiger (and, presumably any pre-Tiger OS user still out there) into the future; the net result is a unified system architecture that helps Apple (and any developer) going forward as less heed may be paid to ensuring excellent Jaguar support in some new application.

Here's why he's wrong: Snow Leopard will be Intel only. In fact, Snow Leopard will be by definition a system bifurcation. Every operating PowerPC Macintosh: stuck at Tiger or Leopard (I mention both because the finest system for the PPC was clearly Tiger); all other Macs: on to Our Brighter Future.

So, carve it in stone: Snow Leopard will be announced and a full demo given at WWDC, cost $129.00, only run on Intel-based Macs, and probably ship reasonably soon after announcement, say right around 9/1/09.

How do you sell that, when this upgrade is supposedly only under-the-hood changes along with some much needed but not-at-all glamorous additions? Interface change, my friends. Marble, here we come.