Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard Shipping on 28/August/2009
— ♣After a couple of weeks, during which we saw the rumor mills heat up with speculation of an August 28th release of Apple’s latest version of their Mac OS X operating system, the company issued a press release this morning, officially announcing that date.
"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. "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."
In Snow Leopard, Apple has refined 90 percent of the more than 1,000 projects that make up Mac OS X. Some of these refinements include a more responsive Finder, Mail that loads messages up to twice as fast, Time Machine with an up to 80 percent faster initial backup, a Dock with Expose integration, QuickTime X with a redesigned player that allows users to easily view, record, trim and share video, and a 64-bit version of Safari that is up to 50 percent faster and resistant to crashes caused by plug-ins. Snow Leopard is half the size of the previous version and frees up to 7GB of drive space once installed.
VoiceOver users will find a substantial upgrade to the Mac OS X’s built-in screen reading solution, as detailed on Apple’s Accessibility page for Snow Leopard. Among VoiceOver’s new capabilities are VoiceOver’s new gesture-based navigation with multi-touch trackpads, similar to the iPhone’s VoiceOver controls, as well as enhanced web browsing features. Details of other refinements and capabilities for a range of Mac OS X’s Universal Access features can be found there as well.
Mac OS X version 10.6 Snow Leopard will be available as an upgrade to Mac OS X version 10.5 Leopard users on August 28 at Apple’s retail stores and through Apple Authorized Resellers, and online pre-orders can be made via Apple’s online store starting today. The Snow Leopard single user license will be available for a suggested retail price of $29 (US) and the Snow Leopard Family Pack, a single household, five-user license, will be available for a suggested price of $49 (US). Additionally, the Mac Box Set includes Mac OS X Snow Leopard, iLife ‘09 and iWork ‘09 and will be available for a suggested price of $169 (US) and a Family Pack is available for a suggested price of $229 (US).
Users who bought a qualifying Mac after June 8th 2009 are eligible for the Mac Up-to-Date program, and can upgrade to Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard for $9.95 (US).