Apple's Snow Leopard to get early release

Apple has announced that its new Mac OS X Snow Leopard will go on sale earlier than expected, on 28th August.

Snow Leopard, which is being sold as an upgrade to OS X Leopard, was not expected to go on sale until September, but will now be available at the end of this month.

The new OS includes improvements to the previous OS and new core technologies. Apple says that over 90% of the 1,000-plus projects in Mac OS X have been refined, creating a faster, more responsive OS that will also take up half the disk space of Leopard, freeing up to 7GB of disk space.

Other features include a more responsive Finder, Mail that will load messages twice as fast as with Leopard, Time Machine with an 80% faster initial backup, redesigned QuickTime X player, integration of the Dock icon bar with Expose for viewing open application windows and a 64-bit version of Safari 4 that is up to 50% faster and resistant to crashes caused by plug-ins.

Snow Leopard also has out of the box support fro Microsoft Exchange, to enable Mac OS X Mail, Address Book and iCal to send and receive email, create and respond to meeting invitations, and search and manage contacts with global address lists.

Bertrand Serlet, Apple’s senior vice president of Software Engineering said: “Snow Leopard builds on our most successful operating system ever and we’re happy to get it to users earlier than expected. 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 Snow Leopard single user upgrade for Mac OS X Leopard users will cost $29, while a Snow Leopard Family Pack for a single household, five-user license, will be available for a suggested price of $49.

Apple will also launch its Mac OS X Server Snow Leopard, 64-bit UNIX OS, which includes enhanced features such as Podcast Producer 2 and Mobile Access Server, and that Apple says is twice as fast as previous versions. Mac OS X Server Snow Leopard will be priced at $499 for unlimited client licences.

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