Apple has announced that they will begin to sell Mac OS X 10.6, also known as Snow Leopard, beginning this Friday, 28 August, at their Apple stores and other Apple Authorized Resellers (a list of which can be found here). Their online store has also begun taking pre-orders. Mac OS X Leopard users will be able to upgrade to Snow Leopard for $29 for one computer or purchase the Snow Leopard Family Pack, which can be used on up to five computers, for $49. Users who purchased an Apple computer on or after 8 June 2009 will only need to pay $9.95. Those looking to upgrade from Mac OS X Tiger will need to pay $169 for an individual license or $229 for a family pack.
With Snow Leopard, Apple has put the focus on making improvements rather than adding new features. Snow Leopard will increase system stability, include 64-bit versions of many of Apple’s programs, including Finder, Mail, iCal, iChat and Safari, and be 7GB smaller than Mac OS X Leopard, space that will be freed up when upgrading to Snow Leopard. Snow Leopard will also include other optimizations to take advantage of multi-core and 64-bit processors. Support for Microsoft Exchange, a collaborative software used by enterprises, will be included without the need to install any additional software.
Performance and stability updates are always welcome and it will be nice to recoup that 7GB of space. I’m going to be picking up a Family Pack on Friday for my two Apple computers and posting my thoughts here after I try it out.
0 Responses
Stay in touch with the conversation, subscribe to the RSS feed for comments on this post.