Apple Mac OS X Snow Leopard Goes on Sale Aug. 28
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Apple's newest big cat, Snow Leopard, is now available for pre-order in Apple's online store and will hit shelves Aug. 28. The long feature list includes mail that loads twice as fast and built-in support for Microsoft Exchange Server 2007.
Apple's much
anticipated Mac OS X v10.6, also known as Snow Leopard, is now available
for pre-order at Apple's online store and will go sale Friday, Aug. 28, Apple
announced on Aug. 24.
Mac OS X Leopard users will be able to upgrade to Snow Leopard for $29. In
addition, anyone who purchased a new Mac between June 8 of this year and Dec.
26 can purchase a Snow Leopard upgrade package for $9.95, which includes
shipping and handling.
The feature list on this new beast is long, with Apple saying that its
engineers have refined 90 percent of the more than 1,000 projects that make up
Mac OS X. Improvements are said to include a more responsive Finder; Mail that
loads messages twice as fast as Leopard Version 10.4.8; a Dock with Expos??«
integration; 80 percent faster initial backup to Time Machine; a redesigned
QuickTime X player that enables easier viewing, recording, trimming and sharing
of video; and a 64-bit, very crash-resistant version of Safari 4 that's
additionally 50 percent faster than the 32-bit version.
Like
Safari, Finder, Mail, iCal and iChat are now also 64-bit, which is said to make
them quicker and more secure, though still compatible with 32-bit
applications.
Additionally, Snow Leopard is half the size of the previous version, freeing up
7GB of space on users' hard drives. It requires a minimum of 1GB of RAM
and will run on any Mac with an Intel processor.
"Snow Leopard builds on our most successful operating system ever, and we're
happy to get it to users earlier than expected," said Bertrand Serlet,
Apple's senior vice president of software engineering, in a statement. "For
just $29, Leopard users get a smooth upgrade to the world's most advanced
operating system and the only system with built-in Exchange support."
The built-in support for Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 should answer
any remaining questions about whether Apple is interested in enterprises.
For OS X Tiger users with an Intel-based Mac, the upgrade will be available with
iLife '09 and iWork '09 for $169, or $229 for a Family Pack.
Apple's new Mac OS X Server Snow Leopard will also go on sale Aug. 28, for $499
with an unlimited number of client licenses.
