My question is (and I realize there may not BE an answer, yet) When will OSX 10.6 be a viable option?
I ask because while I could update, if there is no short term reason to, then I'll stick with what I'm currently running (10.68).
I tested the pre-alpha they released over the weekend on 10.6.8 (despite them telling us "This requires 10.7+").
It is
not completely broken. However, it is certainly WAY more rough on Snow Leopard than it is on Mountain Lion. There are quite a few additional UI glitches and graphical problems right now. I'd call the current pre-alpha "in the realm of usable" on Mountain Lion. By no means a complete product at this point, but "close". You can see the flag sticking out of the hole way up ahead, anyway. Whereas on Snow Leopard, it isn't completely and utterly broken (I did get it to play music), but I'd call it "unusable" currently.
I did not test Lion, though I'd expect that to be closer to ML than SL.
Now, I'd like to just reiterate...
I know there is a lot of excitement over this. That's great! However, please, please, please keep in mind:
When this comes on Friday-ish, this will be an
ALPHA QUALITY RELEASE. That means:
1. Don't depend on it for day-to-day activities.
2. Large swaths of functionality will be broken or incomplete.
3. UI Design is NOT final (in any way - it currently looks essentially identical to the Windows version).*
4. It is going to change rapidly during development. They will PROBABLY make changes that will require you to reset your Library to defaults and start over at some point, and other stuff like that.
Consider it a "test release" that is fun to play with, and in a few months, you should have a nice (perhaps still Beta-quality) release that you should be able to actually use. Great, you got the early-bird deal and you got to help them craft a better product.
However, don't evaluate this build (or any others coming over the next few weeks/months) as "representative of the final product". Again, this is ALPHA. If you have never participated in a beta/alpha trial before, you may need to reset expectations.
* However, I
did get Lucida Grande as my Standard View font.