First Snow Leopard reviews hitting the web

The first OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard reviews are hitting the web. Engadget has a review up that contains some nice videos of new features of Snow Leopard, like Dock Exposé and QuickTime X. It's not a bad first-look at all. Obviously, Snow Leopard isn't shipping until Friday, so either they've acquired a copy somehow, or are using the final Beta version that's been in circulation for a while now. We're waiting to get the final boxed version on Friday before we give our reactions, so look out for our hands-on early next week. The new version of QuickTime X looks good, but I note with interest that it breaks compatibility with many 3rd party apps.

Here at MacFormat we're still waiting for a definitive answer from Apple about whether the £25 upgrade version of Snow Leopard will install on a Mac that doesn't already have Leopard on it, or whether you'd need to install Leopard first, before adding Snow Leopard later (which would be a bit of a drag for a completely clean install). It looks like we might have to wait until Friday to get an answer on this by trying it ourselves, so watch this space.

Apple is being surprisingly vague about this, which I find puzzling. If the £25 version of Snow Leopard needs Leopard installed first then this will be a significant change in the way OS X installs, and could anger some Tiger users who inadvertently purchase the £25 upgrade version thinking it will install on their system. Come on Apple, spill the beans!

UPDATE The dudes at our sister site, TechRadar, have posted their Snow Leopard review too – check it out!