It’s official: Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard available on August 28th
Apple today included a pre-order of Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard on the Apple Store and Amazon.com has it in stock as well. To the delight of Mac users, this proves that the rumors regarding an early release were true. If you order it from Apple today, you can expect a delivery on August 28th 2009.
Snow Leopard will be available as an upgrade for Mac OS X Leopard users for $29 and the Snow Leopard Family Pack, a single household, five-user license, will be available for $49.
More security. A benefit of the 64-bit applications in Snow Leopard is that they’re even more secure from hackers and malware than the 32-bit versions. That’s because 64-bit applications can use more advanced security techniques to fend off malicious code. More secure than everFirst, 64-bit applications can keep their data out of harm’s way thanks to a more secure function argument-passing mechanism and the use of hardware-based execute disable for heap memory. In addition, memory on the system heap is marked using strengthened checksums, helping to prevent attacks that rely on corrupting memory.
The all-new, exactly-the-same Finder. The Finder has been completely rewritten to take advantage of the new technologies in Snow Leopard, including 64-bit support and Grand Central Dispatch. It includes new features such as customizable Spotlight search options and an enhanced icon view that lets you thumb through a multipage document or watch a QuickTime movie.
Exchange support. With Snow Leopard the Mac now has out-of-the-box support for Microsoft Exchange Server 2007, something even Windows PCs don’t have. There’s no need for time-consuming installations or complicated configurations.
Quicker Time Machine backup. Snow Leopard makes Time Machine up to 50 percent faster and reduces the time it takes to complete your initial backup to Time Capsule
Faster to wake up, shut down, and join a wireless network. With Snow Leopard, your Mac wakes from sleep up to twice as quickly when you have screen locking enabled. Shutting down is up to 75 percent faster, saving precious moments when you’re trying to head home or to the airport. And joining wireless networks is up to 55 percent faster.
General requirements
- Mac computer with an Intel processor
- 1GB of memory
- 5GB of free disk space
- DVD drive for installation