Customer Reviews

Mac Box Set (Including OS X Snow Leopard, iLife 09, iWork 09) Single User Pack (Mac)

5 star:		(10)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Having used Tiger (10.4) for the last couple of years and loving it, I finally decided to upgrade, holding my breath and getting an external hard disk as well to be able to use Time Machine. The install from the Snow Leopard DVD took only 55 minutes - and everything (bar my wireless connection) was set up as before, from my desktop background through to all of my preferences on Firefox, Safari and Word. What's better for me, in particular, is being able to sync my Google account to Mail and iCal; Mail is great to use for things like invites or anything with a date on it, because you can get iCal to add the event pretty much automatically. The first couple of loads of anything seem a bit jumpy, but now everything is working super smooth and quickly. I think QuickPlayerX is 20 times better than its predecessors. Preview's also improved - I had been using Adobe Reader, but now I'm back to Preview with this update.

iLife 09 is big improvement on 06 - particularly the iPhoto update. Numbers is a brilliant spreadsheet package and Pages seems to be coming along, although I still find Word a bit more intuitive (perhaps out of habit than by design).

Overall, if you're a Tiger user looking to upgrade your OS, I can't recommend this highly enough. It's been one of the smoothest experiences upgrading let alone installing an OS I've ever encountered (and I've done a few).

I can't fault this product. Well, actually I can, but only a bit. I have experienced the same glitch that others have in that after upgrading to Snow Leopard, Front Row movies play very jerky, and I've had to revert to using 'DVD Player', which is a minor inconvenience really. Other than that I think this package is fantastic value for money. When you consider what they charge for Microsoft Office and compare that with just iWork on it's own, I think it's a no-brainer.
Speaking of no-brainers, I am not an intensive spreadsheet user or document publisher, so don't need the depth and complexity that 'Word' brings. And explains why I always had such trouble producing Word documents which were anything above very basic. I am self-employed and run my own advertising, website, accounts and marketing all using the suite contained in this box, and I am more productive, better organised, happier and less stressed than ever I was trying to use MS Office. Time saved alone is worth the investment.
One slight niggle again is the facial recognition software of iPhoto. It barely works to be honest. My suspicion is that it will work fine if you are starting a photo library from scratch with it. I had over 2,000 photos, and as it has to search and compare every single one, it takes a long time and can be quite inaccurate (I can understand it thinking statues are faces, but plant pots?).
Overall, a brilliant package of software, quite underpriced if you consider what is actually in the box and possible with it all once installed. Worth the upgrade!

I used this product to upgrade from Tiger to Snow Leopard. The process took over 45 minutes but it looked after itself the whole time and was entirely trouble free. I'm very pleased with the resulting system.

Mac OS X Snow Leopard is not your usual operating system update chock full of easy-to-market, fancy new features. No. Snow Leopard is a refinement of Leopard. It introduces under the hood improvements such as Grand Central Dispatch and Open CL which, although neither technology has fully matured yet, are set to help software take advantage of computer processors with multiple cores and allow your graphics card to lend a helping hand when doing very demanding tasks. Snow Leopard is also fully 64-bit capable.

Apart from all the new tech, Snow Leopard also features built-in support for Microsoft Exchange, significant changes to the to way Exposé works and better integration with Google services and Facebook.

The Box Set also comes with iLife '09, arguably the most well-integrated, consumer-oriented suite of media authoring/archiving software ever to grace any personal computer. The latest version includes a massively improved iPhoto, a new and improved iMovie and a personal (High Definition!) guitar tutor in GarageBand.

iWork '09 is Apple's slightly cheaper alternative to Microsoft Office. Pages, Numbers and Keynote offer word processing, spreadsheet and presentation tools that are compatible with their Microsoft cousins (Word, Excel, Powerpoint). If you're a serious Excel geek then this isn't for you but it's perfect for the rest of us. As well as an array of formatting options to work with on a blank document, iWork offers some beautiful and highly customizable templates. A nice little suite for those who don't want to shell out on Office.

At the end of the day, Snow Leopard and all the amazing programs that come with it are blazingly fast and more fun to use than ever. It has to be said that there are a few glaring bugs in the new operating, in particular a wi-fi bug that affects some Macs. But, with version 10.6.2 on the way, I expect Apple will iron out the rough areas.

Despite the bugs, which are to be expected with any new operating system release, I am very happy with the performance of Snow Leopard. I also run a 64-bit version of Vista on the same computer and Snow Leopard is noticeably faster in practically every way.

Well done, Apple! Keep up the frantic innovation.

This is an excellent upgrade package if you are still using Tiger and so easy to install etc.

Good product. Upgrading from Tiger I am particularly impressed by Time Machine. Bit pricy as I didn't want iWork.

I decided it was time to upgrade to Snow Leopard because there was other software I really needed that only runs with the new OS. I upgraded from Tiger. I bought the boxed set because the official Mac website says it is a necessity if you upgrade from Tiger (as opposed to Leopard). This was a bit annoying as I already had iWorks (2008 version - which I love), and I didn't really want the other stuff in the bundle as I mainly use my MacBook for work. But...the Mac site insisted this was necessary, so I did as I was told.
I have since read reviews of the stand-alone upgrade that says it IS possible to jump directly from Tiger, so I can't help feeling cheated!!
OK, so, Snow Leopard installed fine and overall I am reasonably happy. I didn't really have a problem with Tiger, but I do think things might be running a little faster now. BUT:
- my Parallels software no longer works.
- I couldn't print from my HP Deskjet 7000 series printer, despite both the Mac and HP websites claiming I should be able to. Eventually I fixed the problem but only by trawling through other online user forums.
- My TomTom One v3 device is not being recognised at all despite my having downloaded the latest software, which again, according to the TomTom website should fix the problem. It doesn't.
- I can no longer use my excellent Agfa snapscan 1212u scanner. When I try to start ScanWise I get the message "ScanWise can not find the current ColorSync System Profile. Please recalibrate your monitor or select another system profile with the ColorSync Control Panel".
- Although Snow Leopard instantly connected to my home internet service, I have had to reconfigure everything for my work wifi connection (eduroam), which caused headaches and made me miss a deadline! It took our IT staff at work THREE DAYS to fix the problem. Not at all happy about that.
So Beware!!
I'm grouchy from losing so much time to ironing out the above problems...and some of them still aren't sorted out. This product was supposed to make my life easier!
So don't expect everything to run smoothly after upgrading. And check whether you can get away with just buying the upgrade rather than this boxed set.

If you're wondering what I mean, I mean that it all went very sweetly. I did spend some time backing up my Mac to my Iomega hard drive beforehand, in case a clean install was needed.

But I needn't have worried! I put the Snow Leopard disc in, and it was installed in about an hour. After the restart, Time Machine did its stuff, and then a large Software Update brought me up to Version 10.6.2.

iLife '09 seemed to be taking a long time to install and the DVD-drive seemed to working harder than I expected, but normal service resumed when I stopped ClamXAV from scanning the disc.

iWork '09 installed very smoothly as well once ClamXAV was stopped.

All in all, it's a piece of cake to install. I hope the cake in my oven turns out as well.

Good value. I was updating from Tiger and it was a simple process for all programmes in one easy session.

Everything you would expect an Apple product to be! Simple to install, easy to use and gives the least creative of us the opportunity to do something artistic with our photos, movies and music. The operating system (Snow Leopard) moves on an already excellent desktop environment and iLife and iWork are so direct and intuitive. Having worked and played in both PC and Mac systems, there is really no comparison - Mac is the Rolls Royce!