question for Mac owners

[cellio]

I've searched Apple's site for this and done some googling, and near as I can tell Apple hasn't published an answer to my question and it's all speculation. But I might not be looking in the right places -- and certainly don't know the relevant history -- so I'll appeal to my friends for insight.

A relative has Jaguar and is eyeing Panther. He's also eyeing Tiger, which (officially) is being released in the first half of 2005 (but some people seem to be skeptical about that). It costs $129 to upgrade from Jaguar to Panther. No Panther-to-Tiger price has been published.

My question: would an upgrade path that goes through Panther cost appreciably more than a direct upgrade from Jaguar to Tiger when it comes out? Or, by buying Panther, does one get a better price toward Tiger later? If we spend $129 to get him an upgrade now, are we just buying six months' worth of joy or are we doing more for him?

Comments

[estherchaya.livejournal.com]

All that I can add to this query is that I'll ask around to my mac afficionados. I'm a mac user, but I don't keep up on the gossip... I wait until someone tells me, "you need this" to get something new.

However, I can tell you that I'm pretty pleased with panther, and not likely to bother upgrading for a while. This may not be the case for your relative, though.

[cellio]

Thanks! Did you upgrade to Panther from Jaguar and notice a big difference? My father isn't the sort who usually jumps onto new releases right away (as evidence, I offer that he is currently running Jaguar :-) ), so perhaps I've mistaken his comments about Tiger and he's not planning to do that any time soon. If Panther makes his life noticably better than Jaguar did, that's even more likely.