As some of you have discovered, there is nothing to prevent you from using the $29 Snow Leopard installation DVD to setup 10.6 on an Intel-based Mac running Tiger. Apple probably didn’t cripple the installer for the simple reason that it would prevent you from erasing and restoring your hard drive should the need arise.

Or maybe they just want to be nice about the situation.

At the same time, there is a $169 Mac Box Set, a bundle that includes not just Snow Leopard but iLife ’09 and iWork ’09. That is indeed the official method of upgrading from Tiger, on the theory, I suppose, that you should have these two app suites to complete the collection. In essence, that makes the cost of Snow Leopard a mere $11 above the usual list price for these products.

However, what is one to do if you have already purchased these two suites? Would Apple give you a discount on Snow Leopard, or just expect you to purchase the entire package anyway?

Of course many of you know that, from a practical point of view, you can take that Snow Leopard DVD and it’ll work fine on a Mac running Tiger, so long as it is an Intel model. There will be no warning screens, requests for special activation and 10.6 doesn’t even come with a serial number. Many of you have already performed that installation with great success.

At the same time, Apple has something called an EULA, an End User License Agreement, that specifically states that the Snow Leopard DVD can only be installed on a Mac that’s already running Leopard. Obviously that excludes Mac OS 10.4, right? So, in theory, if you don’t obey these restrictions, you are violating the license. You should be using the installer from the Mac Box Set instead.

To a large degree, it appears that a hefty number of Mac users are being totally honest about this. The Mac Box Set sits just behind Snow Leopard in the sales charts at Apple’s online storefront. I don’t for a moment believe that everyone who opted for this package truly believes there is no other route to installing Snow Leopard. They simply want to be honest about it, and if you don’t have the latest iLife and iWork, it happens to be a pretty good deal.

The other legal alternative, I suppose, would be to pay $129 for a Leopard upgrade kit, and $29 for Snow Leopard. At $158, however, you are only getting two operating system DVDs, one of which you won’t actually ever use, so it would be a waste of money.

So what’s the reasoning behind Apple’s peculiar upgrade licensing policy, other than to sell more product? Well, maybe that’s all of it, and I’ll grant them their right to earn an honest income, and certainly a policy of this sort is perfectly legal, if wholly impractical.

As much as Apple is accused of resembling Microsoft in many respects, the facts are often otherwise, however. Apple’s consumer-level software products, including the operating system, don’t carry serial numbers. The exception would be when you upgrade, for example, iWork ’09 after running the demo version and upgrade via an online purchase. Then a serial number is required to unlock the software.

The high-end products, such as Logic Studio and Final Cut Studio, do carry the normal user licensing requirements, and that certainly makes sense considering the pricing of those products and the fact that they cater to people who, for the most part, earn a living from content creation.

Compare that to Microsoft, which has a serial number attached even to the very cheapest, almost unusable, versions of Windows. Worse, if you happen to perform too many upgrades to your PC, Windows often requires that you reactivate your operating system. I suppose the software’s fuzzy logic assumes that, after a certain point, you’re not just upgrading one computer but acquiring another one, for which you need a brand new user license.

Yes, I realize there is a high percentage of piracy around the world, focused particularly on Microsoft software and products from other major developers, such as Adobe. Obviously, these security measures are designed to ensure that each and every copy is being run by someone who actually has the right to do so. Unfortunately, anti-piracy policies that are too draconian can often have the reverse effect. Ask the entertainment industry.

It also helps to price the products affordably, so there’s less incentive to pirate. While it lacks visible feature enhancements for the most part, Apple no doubt invested hundreds of millions of dollars to redo the plumbing in Snow Leopard. That’s something that will play out over time, as more and more developers release products to support the new speed enhancements. Despite the development expense, they charged a shareware-level fee for the upgrade.

In turn, the price for Windows 7, while lower than Vista, is still no less obscene; that is, unless you’re a PC maker and you can buy a few million licenses all at once and take advantage of quantity pricing.

To put things into perspective, perhaps the biggest complaint many critics level against Microsoft is the fact that most everything they build leans heavily on proprietary technologies. For other companies to use those technologies, such as being able to link with Exchange servers, a license must be obtained, and money must change hands. Yes, there are often open source alternatives, but they aren’t always reliable, nor do they fully support all the features.

Apple decided to take the official route, and that’s how they managed to add Exchange support for the iPhone and Snow Leopard. Sure, Microsoft didn’t do it just to be nice. They did it because of the great American dollar, and Apple was evidently happy to pay the piper to make their products more acceptable in the enterprise.

Perhaps this is the best form of business. A willing buyer purchases a product or service from a willing vendor for a fairly negotiated price. I’ll presume for the sake of argument that the price was indeed fair.

Over the years, though, Microsoft has gotten the well-deserved rap for wanting to own everything, or as close to everything as possible. They once even tried to corner the media player market, as most of you know, but we have iTunes and QuickTime, with probably more copies on Windows boxes than Macs. And we all know they both ship standard on the latter.

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So this plaintive refrain is repeated over and over again in two radio ads I heard this morning, while driving to the local convenience store for a cup of java. In each case, the announcer assured us that the company they were hawking would fix all that ails those boxes for modest hourly rates.

Now these two computer shops are local. There are thousands and thousands more littering the landscape, and it certainly makes sense. After all, there are hundreds of millions of personal computers across the planet that are not located in larger businesses, where you can usually depend on your network administrators to make the necessary repairs.

Indeed, the repair shops aren’t all for Windows PCs. Macs need repairs as well after the warranty is up, since they use the same hard drives that you find on a PC, and power supply failures occur on occasion as well.

All well and good.

But the resemblance between the Mac and the PC pretty much ends there. Yes, your Mac OS can get messed up too, but Apple has worked hard to clean up the installer, so upgrading to the latest and greatest version of Mac OS X only rarely gets you into trouble. When it does, absent a hardware problem (particularly defective RAM), it’s because you got a little too enthusiastic about customizing the inner workings of your system.

However, the Windows PC, with thousands upon thousands of possible system variations, can develop far more trouble, and require far more maintenance to sort things out. This is part of Microsoft’s dilemma. Apple operates in a closed ecosystem, with only a limited number of models and possible ways to customize them at the factory. Besides, most Mac users rarely stray beyond a simple RAM upgrade, though some will tackle hard drive replacements.

When it comes to system issues, just reinstalling ought to set things right. In fact, with Snow Leopard, Apple has pretty much given up on the Archive & Install process. If things are totally out of whack, you can wipe the drive and start with scratch, with a little help from Apple’s Migration Assistant, Time Machine or a third-party backup app. But the process, while somewhat daunting to the novice, isn’t so involved that you can’t get from start to finish all by yourself, but allow a few hours for the process.

With Macs, there is also Apple’s Genius Bar or perhaps a third-party shop with a great service department to set things right, but I doubt that they are overworked when it comes to routine software fixes.

With the Windows shop, considerations of simplicity may go out the window. So after the routine hardware replacements, a typical home PC is apt to require malware removal or just a general cleanup. More often than not, it’s just as simple — if that’s what you call simple — to wipe the drive and start over. It may actually cost you less to have the PC repair person restore everything rather than attempt to sort things out, although the hourly fees for the latter can be mighty tempting.

So I can well understand why those PC repair shops are investing heavily in advertising. Indeed, the precarious state of the economy has forced more and more people to put off purchases of a new computer. They struggle to keep the old one running as long as possible, and that only creates a greater climate for things to go wrong. That’s particularly true if preventive maintenance — and that especially includes keeping malware protection software up to date under Windows — has been lackadaisical. It’s not as if you can set and forget the PC.

Indeed, a PC shop just opened adjacent to the neighborhood UPS Store. The person advertises low-cost tuneups, and is apparently also building his own PCs that he not only sells direct, but finances himself. So you pay him weekly or monthly, and you get a brand, spanking new Windows box, along with a local place to take it if things go wrong.

Now I don’t begrudge anyone trying to make an honest living, and if he does good work, he deserves the patronage of local PC users. On the other hand, I haven’t gone in there to see if he knows anything about Macs, or how he might feel about the matter. Certainly repairing old Macs can also deliver some solid profits too.

Maybe I should suggest the Mac equation, in order to help him expand the business. Sure, there’s an Apple Store in the area, along with a Best Buy and third-party Apple reseller, but maybe he can undercut their repair prices. It would be good business for everyone.

Indeed, the fact that the PC usually costs more to maintain than the Mac over the long haul is great news for these shops. But not necessarily for the end-user.

Folks, it’s not as if there were too many surprises at Apple’s music event. I could say, in retrospect, that the thing happened on my birthday, and that Apple is aware of that information, but that would be the height of egomania. The fact is that the event happened at a time convenient for Apple and appropriate to jumpstart the iPod lineup for the forthcoming holiday season.

As usual in recent years, the mainstream media had its own share of predictions for the Apple product introductions, but they seemed to share with the rumor sites the main assumptions about what might happen, for better or worse.

For the most part, it seemed most were skeptical that Steve Jobs would return as host of the event, but you can bet Wall Street was watching the situation closely to see if Apple’s co-founder had recovered sufficiently from his recent liver transplant to appear in public. Indeed, he did, to a standing ovation. It was also interesting to see how he remembered the young man who died in an auto accident and hence gave him a chance to survive.

No, Steve didn’t seem fully recovered yet, and his voice was hoarse, but considering his recent ordeal, it may take quite a while for him to seem his old self again. At least they didn’t bring him out in a wheelchair, right?

Now in the run up to the great event, there were also claims about possible production difficulties that might delay the introduction of the new iPod lineup equipped with a camera, but that appears not to be true. Or at least, they weren’t significant enough to delay shipment to any noticeable degree. Now understand that the Flip Video camcorder, with which the new iPod nano will inevitably be compared, is the standard definition version. However, this is a version 1.0 feature, so there may indeed by HD on the horizon, perhaps as soon as next year. If Apple could offer an iPod nano HD for little more than the standard version, the makers of the Flip Video may find their product to become as unpopular as the Zune. I’m serious!

I also expect that the management of Pure Digital Technologies is going to watch the situation with extreme concern, since Apple is encroaching right into their core market. It’s also telling that the nano now offers an FM radio, and you wonder what too them so long? The iPod touch takes the product line into a whole new universe, since it’s basically a small personal computer.

I’m still working with iTunes 9 and the iPhone 3.1 software, so I’ll withhold comments until later. However, I’m not the sort of person to go wild over a new iTunes release. So long as it works and allows my iPhone to sync properly, I’m a happy camper.

As usual, though, a lot of attention has to be focused on what Apple didn’t talk about. Sure, this session was never presented as anything more than music-oriented, and thus, aside from the demonstration of fancy new iPhone and iPod touch games, Apple stayed on message.

But with the remastered versions of the Beatles catalog now available — and backordered already — you wonder when the Fab  Four will be available for legal digital downloads. It’s not as if Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr are getting any younger, and how many times can they sell you the same old songs, as great as they are, before you move on to something else? They ought to strike while the iron is hot. On the other hand, maybe the Beatles management decided they didn’t want the lads to play second fiddle to Steve Jobs or some quaint digital music players. If that’s the case, there may indeed be an announcement, only it won’t happen for a while.

Also missing from the roster was the fate of the Apple TV, Apple’s hobby that manages to sell in sufficient numbers to remain profitable, but evidently not much more. You see, I’m not at all convinced of the mass market potential for such a gadget. Certainly the Windows initiatives to add media capabilities have all fallen flat. It’s not as if you really need another DVR for your high definition TV either. Even if you don’t buy TiVO, the ones provided by the cable and satellite companies are all perfectly serviceable, right?

Of course one rumor has it that Apple is going to jump into the TV fray with its own contender, but in a market where other participants are exciting the market, it would seem a bad move to make. Besides, it’s not as if a large flat panel TV is easy and convenient to buy at an Apple Store and take home, unless you have a pretty large vehicle, and a few bodies to help you carry one.

And, yes, there will probably be yet another Apple announcement this year, perhaps next month. No doubt it’ll involve an iMac refresh of some sort, but that’s hardly unexpected. As to an Apple tablet, don’t ask!