Recently Apple Co. released the latest version of their storied operating system, 10.6, otherwise known as “Snow Leopard.” Apple engineers have touted it as being an improvement to the already well-received 10.5, adding not necessarily new features but rather, under-the-hood expansions to the features which already exist.

One of the big talking points for Apple has been that this upgrade only costs $29 – well below the standard price of an operating system upgrade. (Unless you’re using Linux or something.) So the question remains – is it worth your $29?

One of the first things I noticed about Snow Leopard is how long it took to install. I put it on my older Mac Pro on top of a clean 10.5 – or, Leopard – installation, having backed everything up to a Time Machine drive, as well as a spare drive for safety and redundancy. It took about 45 minutes just to apply Snow Leopard to my machine from start to finish. For me, that wasn’t a big deal, I had other things to do, but I was astonished at how long this took, when a full install of the previous OS didn’t even take that long. This is not common with other experiences out there, generally people have found Snow Leopard to install more quickly than Leopard – sensibly so, since it is a smaller package, but for some reason it took me longer.

Apple made a big deal out of Snow Leopard being able to save you space by being smaller than its predecessors. There’s two ways it does this – both are noteworthy, but it’s not as straightforward as you’d think.

Less conspicuously, Snow Leopard has changed the way it reports disk space. In 10.6, disk space is reported to match manufacturers’ reports, so that if you buy a 100gb hard drive, then it will show up as a 100gb hard drive. It does this by calculating the disk size in base 10 instead of base 2, which all previous Apple OSes have used, as well as every version of Windows to date. It’s debatable as to whether this is beneficial, since software uses base 2 computation, and developers will be left without consistent file size and usage statistics across operating systems, but it does match up more with consumer expectation. Personally, I don’t know if more clearly reporting where that extra .3gb went is more useful, but maybe people will like that. It remains to be seen.

Then what most people have heard about by now, is that Snow Leopard removes “Rosetta,” which allows older programs not explicitly written for Intel machines. It’s part of Apple’s push to get everybody to upgrade, of course, but what this also results in is a bunch of broken programs. The good folks over at Wikidot have compiled a fairly exhaustive list of OS X programs, and their compatibilities with Snow Leopard. It’s absolutely worth checking, to see if your favorite programs work in Snow Leopard before taking the plunge. This also doesn’t include plugins for Safari, or other items that live in your System Preferences pane, so do a little extra research first.

Other things that break, I’ve found, include some custom Apache installs and server scripts – I haven’t delved too deep into why this is yet, and it may take somebody more learned on the subject than myself to really get it, but as with your software, if there’s anything essential, proceed with caution.

As far as speed goes, tech blog Gizmodo did a number of benchmark tests, which note a number of interesting results. Ultimately, they found that Snow Leopard is faster than Leopard – though mostly in first-party applications. This is pretty consistent with my own experience, while Mail, iCal, iTunes and other Apple apps absolutely ran snappier, neither Photoshop CS4 Extended, Flash CS4 nor even Firefox really seemed to experience any kind of benefit from the new OS.

So how does Snow Leopard get faster? In a nutshell, Apple has improved its multicore processor support, and rewritten most of the applications it ships with to run in 64-bit mode to take advantage of this. Since most third-party apps AREN’T written in 64-bit, that generally explains the discrepancy.

While Apple has been pretty satisfied with their UI as of Leopard, they did make a few tweaks in Snow Leopard that some folks might find useful.

For one, icons in Finder are now scalable, via a little slider in the window.

Icons now scale up to 512×512, which is not really that useful for most people, but it does mean that you can preview movie files in the icon now. I personally prefer the quick look functionality introduced in 10.5, but everybody has their own preferences of course.

The dock, and Exposé have been improved as well, enabling users to select which instance of a window they’d like open, which is nice. Stacks, which came about in the previous OS has been improved as well, enabling users to do more than just drag items in and out of the stack, or open a file. Scrolling has now been enabled in grid view, as well as adding a “smart list” view which helps to see more items in the stack at one time.

Some of the included apps have seen upgrades beyond simply running in 64-bit, as well. Mail, Address Book and iCal now work with Microsoft Exchange, which has been a big deal for a number of enterprise workers who have wanted to hook their Macs into their work network.

Quicktime 10 has seen a particularly notable upgrade, enabling video editing as well as screen (video) capture – great for amateur filmmakers and screencasters alike.

There’re more added features as well, which Gizmodo has done a great job of visually rounding up. Take a look for more of the gooey details on that front.

Of course, the ultimate question is whether Snow Leopard is worth it. The big thing – which a number of other critics agree – is that Snow Leopard is essentially a service pack for 10.5. There aren’t enough new features to really go ahead and call it a new operating system. However, the improvements it DOES make are certainly worthwhile, if you could use them. Exchange support, built-in screencasting utilities and other accoutrements are pretty nice to have – they’re nothing that you didn’t know you needed, but they’re great for folks who need them.

Is it worth shelling out $29 for a service pack? Well in my case, I was going to buy a screencasting package in the coming weeks so getting an update to my operating system along with it sure isn’t a bad way to go. It was good for me, but your mileage may vary.

Images courtesy of Apple Co. and Gizmodo. Thanks guys!