Walt Mossberg, a well known personal technology blogger for the Wall Street Journal, made a slip up yesterday in his Apple Snow Leopard OS X review. During his review, he gave out this tip:

“But here’s a tip: Apple concedes that the $29 Snow Leopard upgrade will work properly on these Tiger-equipped Macs, so you can save the extra $140.”

Basically he’s telling current Tiger uses, you won’t have to buy Leopard in order to upgrade to Snow Leopard. While it’s a useful tip for many Tiger users, it’s illegal in the minds of Apple. But Walt is not the only one supporting this claim.

NY Times Tech reporter, David Pogue, also said on his Twitter page, that Leopard is not required to upgrade to Snow Leopard, “even though Apple says “requires Leopard.”

So what to make of this? Well for one thing, Apple won’t be happy about it. They want Tiger users to upgrade to Leopard and then to Snow Leopard, you know go through the process while handing Apple a $140 along the way. How much of this will affect Apple’s Leopard sales? Who knows, but it’ll definitely increase Snow Leopard sales, as Tiger users will try to upgrade without having to install Leopard on their computers.

Whether or not Mossberg and Pogue are trying to help users or screw Apple, Steve Jobs won’t like it one bit. I wonder if these tech reporters will be asked to make an apology or remove the content from their reviews. We’ll wait and see, although I doubt Apple will say much about the matter. They’ll still be raking in dough from Snow Leopard sales.

(Via Gizmodo)