The long awaited OS update from Apple was officially released into the wild…hey, it’s Lion (aka 10.7) so isn’t that what people do with the big cats after raising them in captivity or a zoo? This one follows the ongoing tradition with Snow Leopard (10.6), it’s for the Intel-based systems. If you have an older PowerPC, you should stay with Leopard (10.5) and probably look into getting a new Mac.
I got the opportunity to do some beta testing on it too. Not as much as I wanted because my recent vacation interrupted the process of seeing what I could break or discover.
Should you upgrade? It really depends upon your applications unlike Lion’s recent predecessors. If you have anything which requires Rosetta, (in plain English, it’s an older piece of software which used to run on PowerPC, tends to pre-date 2006) then you will either need to upgrade it (for me it’s Quicken, Amadeus, QuarkXpress) or live without it (GIF Builder, Real Player). Not sure? Do a ‘Get Info’ on the application, if you see “(PowerPC)” to the right of its name, it won’t work. “(Intel)” and “(Universal)” will be operational.