MacOS – the cheapest way to upgrade from OS X10.4 to 10.6

Apple wants you to buy the Box Set in order to upgrade from Mac OS X Tiger 10.4 to Snow Leopard. Technically, you the Snow Leopard retail package will upgrade intel based Macs running Mac OS X Tiger 10.4, however it is against the terms of the End User License Agreement (EULA).

The Box Set includes additional software that typically comes with a new Mac (and some that doesn't) and it is recommended by Apple to 'upgrade your Mac experience' because it is more like buying a new Mac than just upgrading the operating system.

To hear it straight from Apple, here are the answers from Alan Eyzaguire, director of software product marketing at Apple Europe to this question.

"We just think that Apple customers could really benefit from having those. They're great software."

"it's great when people get the full experience"

"if you have Snow Leopard it's great to have the latest iWork and iLife"

"we wanted to make that [upgrade] as attractive as possible"

"you get it almost for free"

"it's a steal!"

"Technically, yes, it would upgrade a Tiger install, but in the licensing, no." (citation)

If you just need one program, you could try running it using Wine. This is a compatibility layer that allows you to run Windows software on *nix systems, which includes Mac OS X. Here is a tutorial to help you get started.

Note that not every Windows programs will run using Wine - you might need to experiment first. Or head over to the Wine Application Database for user reviews on how well your program is supported.

Alternatively, you could use one of the many virtualization options out there. Parallels Desktop and VMware Fusion are excellent but paid options, while VirtualBox is free (and it works great too). However, you'd need a Windows license to legally run Windows in this way.