Apple’s Mac OS X v10.6 Snow Leopard operating system will go on sale both online and from authorised resellers from Friday 28 August.
Snow Leopard is the update to the Leopard OS and will be available as an upgrade for will be available as an upgrade for €29 (inc VAT).
Snow Leopard promises to be much zippier than its predecessor, with a more responsive Finder; faster loading messages in Mail, up to 80pc faster backup with Time Machine, and a 64-bit version of Safari 4 that is up to 50pc faster.
Snow Leopard is also half the size of the previous version and frees up to 7GB of drive space on installation so, similar to the Windows 7 transition from Vista, upgrading to Snow Leopard will free up space and use less system resources.
Snow Leopard will also have built in support for Microsoft Exchange Server 2007, and will allow users to use 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.
Also Spotlight and Quick Look will work within Exchange.
“Snow Leopard builds on our most successful operating system ever and we’re happy to get it to users earlier than expected,” said Bertrand Serlet, Apple’s senior vice president of software engineering.
“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.”