After a year of hype, Snow Leopard is finally here. But does it have claws? Apple's newest Mac OS has been billed as an under-the-hood upgrade -- a necessary evolution of the operating system. But it's a little light on new features that Mac users can touch, see and feel (except, of course, for the mouse that responds to multiple finger gestures).
One of the big upgrades to the OS is that it supports multi-core applications (applications that run fast because they leverage many processors) and lets developers take better advantage of graphics chips. Yet there aren't many applications today that can take advantage of this performance improvement.
"You may see some [multi-core] applications in a number of months," says Gartner analyst Michael Silver, "but more major applications, you're probably talking next year and beyond."
Also, if you have an old Mac, upgrading to Snow Leopard might mean having to buy a new Mac. That's because Snow Leopard is designed for Macs with Intel chips, not PowerPC chips. Apple switched to Intel chips three years ago.
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