Mac OS X Snow Leopard has hit the streets

The snow leopard (Uncia uncia or Panthera uncia), sometimes known as ounce, is a moderately large cat native to the mountain ranges of Central Asia. (Wikipedia) .

Mac OS X version 10.6 “Snow Leopard” is the seventh major release of Mac OS X, Apple’s desktop and server operating system. (Wikipedia)

You can only have guess which definition I will be talking about today.  Yes you guessed right! Today I will be talking about the Mac OS X operating system that was released by Apple yesterday.  I was lucky and pre-ordered my copy of “Snow Leopard” and received it in the mail yesterday, kudos to Apple’s online store and customer service perfection which I can’t fault!

So what does all of this mean to Mac owners?  For $29 US or $39 AUD you can upgrade to the latest and greatest operating system offering from Apple.  Apple defines Snow Leopard as “The worlds most advanced operating system, finely tuned” and I would definitely consider it as a minor as opposed to major update, but nonetheless it is well priced for the featureset that you receive.  So what is it that Snow Leopard enhances over the current Leopard?

• 64 Bit native support allowing the operating system to address and use more memory breaking the 32 Bit 2GB limit.  What does this mean to the average user?  Greater performance and notable speed improvements from startup to shutdown.  This also includes faster pdf and jpg rendering and refreshes.  If your Mac is equiped with more than 2GB RAM it will use it!
• Native support for Microsoft Exchange 2007 and connecting to your mail, calendar and address book at work.  The organisation will need to be running the current version of Exchange being 2007.
• New look, new features for Exposé and Stacks.  Expose can now display all windows for a single program by left clicking and holding its icon in the dock (a feature that has always been in Windows Vista and now further enhanced in Windows 7). Stacks will now display subfolders!
• Do you use Time machine backup?  This is now 80% quicker!!
• Higher resolution and greater stability with iChat.
• QuickTime X is the next version of the well known QuickTime player which comes with a new streamlined interface and performance improvements for media streaming.
• We all love Safari 4 and its great speed in rendering websites.  Well with the 64 Bit support in Snow Leopard, Safari 4 now delivers up to 50 percent faster JavaScript performance.

As you can see, Apple have taken a secure already robust operating system being Leopard and fine tuned it even further in Snow Leopard.  This is an approach that Apple are renowned for doing with other product releases such the most recent 3GS upgrade.

I will plan to update my Mac during this week and let you know how I go with a few screen shots along the way.

Do you own a Mac? and will you be updating to Snow Leopard anytime soon?