Version 10.6 of Apple’s Macintosh operating system, branded as Snow Leopard, hit the stores last Friday, marking a decade of the company building the system. Apple states the new OS has hundreds of refinements, new core technologies and out-of-the-box support for Microsoft Exchange.
“For just $29 [$35 in Canada], Leopard users get a smooth upgrade to the world’s most advanced operating system and the only system with built in Exchange support,” said Bertrand Serlet, Apple’s Senior VP of Software Engineering.
To create Snow Leopard, Apple claims its engineers refined 90 percent of the more than 1,000 projects that make up Mac OS X. The company points to key features like 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 Exposé integration; and QuickTime X with a redesigned player that allows users to view, record, trim and share video.
Apple also points to a new 64-bit version of Safari 4 that it claims is up to 50 percent faster and resistant to crashes caused by plug-ins. As well, Snow Leopard is said to be half the size of the previous version and frees up to 7GB of drive space once installed.
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