Apple's handing out Snow Leopard for free

Padmini Harchandrai • April 20, 2012, 16:00:15 IST

If you’re still stuck on Leopard and your Mac can handle the next level, you are in for a treat. Apple, in an attempt to push users towards the cloud, are

Apple's handing out Snow Leopard for free

If you’re still stuck on Leopard and your Mac can handle the next level, you are in for a treat. Apple, in an attempt to push users towards the cloud, are giving away free copies of Snow Leopard. According to Macgasm , MobileMe customers are getting emails that they will receive a free DVD of Snow Leopard. After they install Snow Leopard, they then get a prompt to upgrade to OS X Lion and sign up for iCloud. If you are using MobileMe and would like to upgrade, this is the link that you need to log into and fill in your address information.

The snow leopard is waiting

Snow Leopard currently costs $29 (approx 1511) while Lion costs $29.99 in the Mac App Store ( 1563 approx). As you know, if you want to upgrade to Lion, you have to go through the Mac App Store in Snow Leopard as Lion is not available on discs or drives. iCloud is free upto 5 GB and then it starts costing $20 (approx 1042) for 10 GB, $40 (approx 2084) for 20 GB and $100 (approx 5211) for 50 GB. As you know, iCloud syncs your Contacts, Calendars, Mail as well as Apple’s Pages, Keynote and Numbers software across your iDevices.

To upgrade to Snow Leopard, your Mac needs to have the following specs:

Computer: Any Intel-based Mac (2005 onwards)
Disk space: 5 GB
Memory: 1 GB

Lion needs you to have Intel compatible Macs running Core 2 Duo, i3, i5, i7 or Xeon processors. The update size is 4 GB and the download can take about 10 hours on a 1 Mbps connection. The most prominent feature of Lion is the ability to resume applications after restarting or closing a particular application and documents being auto saved in real time. Of course, now, we’re all gearing up for Mountain Lion. The ambition for this new OS is that it will bridge the gap between Mac OS and iOS. However, only very specific Apple computers are eligible for the update to OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion. If you have a MacBook Pro measuring 13 inches, which launched in mid-2009 as well as those that were launched thereafter can update to the OS. 17 and 15-inch MacBook Pros from late 2007, and later can avail the new OS. The late 2008 and succeeding editions of the MacBook Air can update to OS X 10.8. iMacs from mid-2007, MacBook 13-inches from 2008, MacBook 13-inches from 2009, Mac Minis and XServe from early 2009 and Mac Pro from early 2008 are all capable of upgrading to Mountain Lion. Are you still using Leopard? Will you upgrade to Snow Leopard and eventually Lion? Let us know in the comments section below.

Written by Padmini Harchandrai

Paddy does not, we repeat, definitely does NOT belong in the category of Mac-head (yeh right!). She does get excited by her iPhone and her iMac and her iPod Nano and her Macbook and Bali's iPad and her future iHouse (patent pending). Ok, so maybe her head is a little bit forbidden fruit shaped. She likes shooting video (iPhone 4 camera zindabad!) and editing montages (Final Cut Pro zindabad!), whether the scene calls for it or no. In her spare time, she's either kicking it on stage with KB the keyboard or kicking butt at Taekwondo. see more