<p>I’m going to be getting a mac for college, and I’ve been reading around and have read that Snow Leopard, the new operating system for macs will be coming out in the near future. Does anybody know (an educated guess is probably as close are you can get) when it will be coming out? Will be out before next school year most likely? And if its not out by the time school starts, will its advantages be worth waiting for?</p>
<p>Leopard came out soon after the school year started IIRC. They time everything so that you can’t cash in on the educational discounts AND get the new operating system. Same thing with computer models. The life cycle of a Mac is about 3 years.</p>
<p>It’s rumored to ship late Q2/early Q3 of this year.</p>
<p>I was NDA’d on Snow Leopard so I can’t say anything specific but I am looking forward to it and plan to pay for upgrades to our three systems.</p>
<p>Last year at the WWDC Jobs said it would be out in a year. Expect it to be announced at this years WWDC, which will also coincide with the day Apple will but out the free ipod student discount like they do annually. Oh yeah expect prior to June 15th.</p>
<p>^So do you think I would be able to take advantage of the free iPod thing the week after my HS graduation (graduation on June 6th)? I wanna get my macbook ASAP so I can start getting used to it!</p>
<p>You’ll hear about once they start the sale. I’m sure someone will post here once the sale begins, and if not, checking Apple.com can’t hurt. If you have to wait another week after graduation, it won’t be the end of the world. 
</p>
<p>Getting used to Mac OS won’t take you too long. It took me maybe a week to get everything basic down habitually (keyboard shortcuts, user settings, installations, the dock, etc), and within a month, there wasn’t a thing that I hadn’t figured out how to do yet. (At least, nothing that I needed to know)</p>
<p>(Trust me, I’m in the same boat as you. Can’t wait to get my new unibody MacBook. But I’ve been waiting for a looooong time, so what’s another week? )</p>
<p>If you buy a mac through your school, do you still get the free iPod? I’m going to Cornell and the way they do it is that you make your order on the apple website, and then you send the proposal to the schools tech store, and then they order it through the school. We get an even further discount than the traditional education pricing, but I was just wondering if we get the free iPod/printer whatever deal they’ll offer.</p>
<p>Should I go with the free iPod or should I wait till snowleopard comes out?</p>
<p>ZFanatic, they’re both rebates, so it may still work with your school.</p>
<p>And SmallCollegesFTW, who is to say they won’t overlap?</p>
<p>"And SmallCollegesFTW, who is to say they won’t overlap? "</p>
<p>That’s what I’m talkin about… :)</p>
<p>It would be amazing if they did, but if they don’t?</p>
<p>If they don’t, then it depends on your need, I suppose. </p>
<p>If you need the laptop for next school year, then obviously you can’t wait past August or so. If there’s no news on the release date by the end of summer, odds are good that it won’t be out in time for the upcoming semester.</p>
<p>If you don’t need it for school, and Snow Leopard is important to you, than obviously wait it out.</p>
<p>Is the free ipod in addition to the $100 discount usually? Also when does this promotion usually come out?</p>
<p>and which iPods do you think would qualify?</p>
<p>I’m pretty sure the iPod thing is a rebate up to a certain amount, probably like 200 or something. I bet if you bought an expensive iPod, you’d just take 200 off the price because that’s how much you get back.`</p>
<p>Last year the options were a Nano or a Touch. You could buy larger capacity for more money (as it’s a rebate, rather than an actual giveaway).</p>
<p>The free ipod is in addition to the student discount. The free ipod is not really free, it is a rebate for a ipod to bought up to a given amount. </p>
<p>If you are a student you qualify. Most apple products are cheaper via the apple.com education page than at your schools bookstore or whatever.</p>