Apple releases latest Snow Leopard in the OS jungle

Bangalore: Apple has announced that it will be launching its latest Operating System (OS) Apple Snow Leopard on August 28, two months before the launch of Microsoft's Window's 7. Apple's Snow Leopard, also known as Mac OS x 10.6 is available at a price as low as $29 for OS x 10.5 Leopard users. Nearly nine out of ten system elements have been tweaked for this OS. Apple claims that this OS is half the size of the previous versions. "It has 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 expose integration; QuickTime X with a redesigned player that allows users to easily view, record, trim and share video; and a 64-bit version of Safari 4 that is up to 50 percent faster and resistant to crashes caused by plug-ins," said the company. There is no doubt that users of OS x 10.5 Leopard will go for the cheap upgrade to increase their machine's performance. But people running older versions of OS X aren't eligible to run OS x 10.6 Snow Leopard at any price. Only exception being 10.4 Tiger users who can upgrade by buying Mac box set for $169. Mac box set is a bundle of Snow Leopard and the latest versions of Apple's iLife media-creativity and iWork personal-productivity suites. Also, a user has to have an Intel processor in order to upgrade to OS x 10.6.