InfoTech: Apple ships OS X upgrade early, cheap.

As Windows users await the launch in October of Vista replacement Windows 7, Apple has stolen a march, announcing the early release of the latest OS X - and it costs about a third of the cost of upgrading Windows.

Although based on Linux, OS X is a commercial operating system and comes with a stack of built in features that work out of the box.

A recent convert to Mac, after using Windows all his computing life told ChiefOfficers.Net "I turned it on, installed what I needed and it all worked. I plugged in my Roland sound box and it worked perfectly first time." Roland recently told ChiefOfficers.Net that it does not provide drivers for Linux based machines, so this test demonstrated how far Apple have developed the base product.

Apple says "To create Snow Leopard, our engineers refined 90 percent of the more than 1,000 projects that make up Mac OS X."

For Windows migrants, Snow Leopard is the only desktop operating system with built in support for Microsoft Exchange Server 2007, and it allows you 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, says Apple.

Mac OS X version 10.6 Snow Leopard will be available as an upgrade to Mac OS X version 10.5 Leopard on August 28 at Apple's retail stores and through Apple Authorized Resellers, and online pre-orders can be made through Apple's online store (www.apple.com) starting today. The Snow Leopard single user license will be available for a suggested retail price of $29 (US) and the Snow Leopard Family Pack, a single household, five-user license, will be available for a suggested price of $49 (US). For Tiger users with an Intel-based Mac , the Mac Box Set includes Mac OS X Snow Leopard, iLife '09 and iWork '09 and will be available for a suggested price of $169 (US) and a Family Pack is available for a suggested price of $229 (US).

The Mac OS X Snow Leopard Up-to-Date upgrade package is available to all customers who purchased a qualifying new Mac system from Apple or an Apple Authorized Reseller between June 8, 2009 and the end of the program on December 26, 2009, for a product plus shipping and handling fee of $9.95 (US). Users must request their Up-to-Date upgrade within 90 days of purchase or by December 26, 2009, whichever comes first.

Snow Leopard requires a minimum of 1GB of RAM and is designed to run on any Mac computer with an Intel processor.

For the first time, system applications including Finder, Mail, iCal , iChat and Safari are 64-bit and Snow Leopard's support for 64-bit processors makes use of large amounts of RAM, increases performance and improves security while remaining compatible with 32-bit applications. Grand Central Dispatch (GCD) provides a revolutionary new way for software developers to write applications that take advantage of multicore processors. OpenCL, a C-based open standard, allows developers to tap the incredible power of the graphics processing unit for tasks that go beyond graphics, the company says.