Being an early adopter is much akin to the first person that runs into a building when it’s on fire. Even if you’re properly suited up, you might be in more danger because you’ve not taken the time to fully size up the situation and don’t know the ins and outs, the pitfalls… and the obstacles. An early adopter of technology, especially initial release technology… they’ve been similarly burned.

But I can venture that’s not the case with Apple’s newly released 10.6 Snow Leopard (Build 10A432). The bad part, my trust PowerPC G4 Cube nicknamed “Cubezilla” finally died, just a week or so short of having it for 8 years. I had replaced the original 450mhz CPU with a Powerlogix 1ghz G4 with 3mb cache, 1.5gb of RAM and the absolute maximum HD I could shove in there, 120gb. Not a monster machine, but damn I loved it.

I didn’t upgrade that machine past 10.4.10, but it still ran Adobe Creative Suite 2, Flex Builder 3, Quicktime 7.6, Flash Player 10… among just about every other piece of software that I’m having to install/upgrade on my new (early 2009) Apple Mini Mac with an Intel Core 2 Duo, 2gb DDR3 RAM and 160gb HD with a 1tb HD tethered to it via USB2 with an internal SuperDrive; nicknamed Minya, the son of Godzilla. I liked my new machine, but with 10.6 floating on the horizon, I had barely gotten it up and running and hadn’t installed much more than internet based apps first.

With that said, I hit up Best Buy, grabbed the 10.6 update for $25.00 – the price that’s currently on their website. Came home, slammed the singular DVD in there and while it was updating, read the tiny little pamphlet and wondered what all had been updated. The big fuss… moving parts of the OS to fully 64-bit – from the kernel to the updated Finder which has been in need of rewriting since… well, for quite a while.

The biggest thing that I have to stress… the move to 64-bit does not mean it’s faster. Nor does it mean anything else other than Apple is fully utilizing the chips given to it by Intel. Now, with that out of the way, 10.6 is lighter, faster, and smaller. Programs were recompiled and smaller. Less space was used – I gained some 20.1gb back from the prior size (no joke) and things like the finder seem to be snappier and less “heavy”. QuickTime X is on the system now, and despite having a cleaner look, it starts up faster and seems to use a bit less RAM than QuickTime 7.6.

But so far, this is one initial update that I don’t regret. I cannot say the same thing for 10.3 nor 10.5. Both were problematic for me in so many ways it was annoying. Speaking of annoyances, there’s a few. Growl isn’t yet 64-bit – the pref pane that is. So within the System Preferences, once you click it, you will be prompted to restart the System Preferences in order to gain access to those 32-bit preference panes. Luckily, the apps that aren’t 64-bit yet do not require this kind of switching – for instance Adobe AIR apps, which are not 64-bit yet at all – will still run alongside your 64-bit apps without incident.

Why would you want it? It’s simple. It’s lighter, it’s smaller, it’s faster and it utilizes more of the CPU but less processes than before. More bang for the buck, and it actually seems like I’m using the hardware and starting to finally see what Apple saw when they abandoned the PowerPC for Intel.

All in all… I’m impressed. And an update that didn’t cost me an arm and a leg… take that Microsoft.