I’ve discovered that if you take your Mac in for warranty service (ie., dead HD like mine), they will automatically upgrade it to Tiger (friend that works at Apple Store confirmed that they do it for other issues also, not just dead HD, even though they don’t have to reinstall OSX). Downside – no media, so if you ever plan on wiping your Mac clean (why? this ain’t winblows!), you’ll be back to Panther.

So I picked one from the local apple store at the beginning of April.

When the Tiger news broke on the 12th, I was a bit surprised. I did not really expect it til May-June. Perhaps I ought ought to have kept myself better in the loop, I might have know it was as imminent. Anyway, I immediately searched for the information on the upgrade path for recent purchasers and was a bit dismayed to learn that it only included purchasers from that day forward.

Luckily my fiancee knew just what to do. She called the store and mentioned the two-week price guarantee on the back of the receipt. After some discussion and prodding, they agreed to “return” the mac and “resell” it to me on that day. I was then able to participate in the up-to-date program. Must give big kudos to the Apple store for working with me on this. They did the right thing. And they also knew I was prepared to return the mac and pay the $87 restocking fee in order to get Tiger for that price instead of paying $129. And how knows, maybe the second time, I would not have purchased from them. Maybe I’d have tried Comp USA or Best Buy. I made sure they knew of these possibilities. Luckily it did not come to that.

Also, people should note that if you have access to any type of educational discount, you can get Tiger for $69. Not a bad price at all.

And while I’m a huge fan of paying less money in general, remember that most software that has an upgrade version costs $400+ and the upgrade version costs about $100. I tend to think that we’re ALL getting the upgrade price since everyone buying has to have bought a copy of the Mac OS at some point with their machine. It’s a just a little more than we expect, which is pretty much par for the course with Apple.