She just got off the plane and you reluctantly go to the airport to meet her thinking about how you’ve never even heard of this cousin and why should I go out of my way to take care of this person I don’t even know. And suddenly a MACK truck hits you!!! Metaphorically speaking. Your cousin shows up at the gates smiling and waving at you! She’s a hottie! Now you don’t know whether or not to greet her respectfully or to take her out and buy a drink!! Confused? Thankfully, I don’t have this problem.

So you knew it was coming. And Apple just announced that Snow Leopard will be on sale in September. But do your really know what’s inside the new update. You’re thinking all the changes are under the hood and there really isn’t all that much there. Well, I suggest you have a look at the long list of items Apple has in store for Mac OS 10.6. And I think the price for the upgrade is pretty reasonable considering what you get. $29USD. Compare that too a similar under-the-hood upgrade to Windows Vista at $79.  Arguable, but in comparison Microsoft’s upgrade seems more like a long list of much-needed fixes rather than a real solid upgrade. I’ll leave it up to you to decide. This is a peaceful blog.

The subtle yet compelling features I’m excited about are the new gesture controls built into new and old macs. I’m using the pre-unibody macbook pro so I’m particually excited about the three and four finger gestures that are coming to the OS as default. No more hacks!!! And the ability to write chinese directly on your trackpad is a very welcome update, if not long-overdue update. Other things like a smaller hard disk footprint (The new OS saves you 6GB of space.), faster bootup and shutdown times, better network performance (even if its asleep, mind you),  are all welcome changes. But what you are really seeing, is the most popular version of the Mac OS, OS Leopard, getting its second coat of polish. We’re talking about an OS that is so feature rich from its last update that it only needs to do a slight tune-up. Am I biased? Of course I am. But it only stands to prove Job’s age-old comparison between the Mac and luxury cars such as BMW and Mercedes etcs… Your typical BMW will only need service maybe once or twice a year. This is what i’m told. I’ve never had to format my Mac ever since I’ve bought it. I’m constantly formating other peoples PCs and cleaning out the junk that accumulates. But I digress. *breathe*

One more neat little feature is the ability to read Mac OS files from within Bootcamp. Meaning, if you’re running windows you can still have a peek at the Mac hard disk. Apple is so bored they’re adding features to Windows!! No more installing Mediafour’s MacDisk! Mind you, this only allows you to read Mac disks not write to them in Windows. Apple says this keeps viruses away from the Mac side of things. Touché!

It’s a hot update and I can’t wait for it to drop in September. I’ll let you know how it goes when I get it.