Apple OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard costs £25 from today, hits shelves on Friday

Apple has made Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard available to buy at the Apple Web site. It hits Apple Store shelves on 28 August, this Friday, and will cost £25. A Mac Box Set has also been announced, which at £129 is the only upgrade option for users running the older Tiger operating system.

A family pack, which allows you to install Snow Leopard on up to five machines in one household -- which does include student houses, kids -- costs £39. The Mac Box Set contains Snow Leopard, iLife 09 and iWork 09. The family version of this bundle is £179. Delivery is free on both the standard version and the Mac Box Set.

If you've bought a new Mac since 8 June, you'll be able to upgrade for £7.95 to cover postage of the new disk. To claim your upgrade, fill in the form at the Apple site within 90 days of purchasing the hardware, and remember, the offer completely ends on 26 December 2009.

Owners of older Macs running Tiger can upgrade too, as long as you have an Intel chip inside. Macs powered by PowerPC processors won't play ball with Snow Leopard.

If you're not sure, at the Snow Leopard page there's a link to work out what your current setup is, and see which package you need. The two options are the standard £25 package if you're currently running Leopard, or the £130 Mac Box Set if you're running Tiger. That's a good deal compared to standalone pricing for iLife and iWork, and we have no objections to bundling iLife -- which includes iPhoto, GarageBand and other consumer apps -- but we wonder how home users would feel about being forced into getting iWork.

While you're waiting for your disk to arive, why not whet your appetite with our Snow Leopard wallpaper gallery, brush up on our FAQ guide, detailing everything you need to know, or have a sitdown and a cup of tea and think about what you're going to do with the 7GB or so of memory Snow Leopard will free up.