Apple launches Mac OS X 10.6 ‘Snow Leopard’ 

Mac OS X 10.6, code named as ‘Snow Leopard’, launched on 28^th August 2009 is claimed by Apple as the world’s most advanced operating system. Let’s find out the various small and big leaps Apple has tried to make with this OS and also the requirements a system must fulfil for you to enjoy the experience of operating system, which definitely is one of its kind. 

What’s new in the Mac OS X 10.6? 

• This new refined OS and most of the 10.6 application is compatible with 64-bit processor and is also ready to support a 16 terabyte RAM. 
• Microsoft Server Exchange support: 

1. It is very smooth and easy to connect to Microsoft Exchange server 2007 using Apple’s Mail app, taking the global address list from the Apple address book and set up meeting using the intuitive iCal.
2. Launching a mail, searching and moving a message has become twice as fast and listing the content is 4 times faster.  

• The finder is rewritten in 64-bit Cocoa making it classier with following enhancements: 

1. A customizable spotlight search option with the facility of sorting spotlight search result by name, date modified, date created, size, kind or label.
2. The item in the trash folder can be restored to the original location by selecting the item and choosing put back from the file menu.
3. We can watch a QuickTime movie preview in the icon view right in the finder.
4. Preview also provides a smart feature of previewing a file of any format like Microsoft excel, power point without having it installed in the system.
5. We can modify the default size, labelling and alignment of icons.
6. Ejecting external drives are more reliable and intelligent. Core system services like Spotlight indexing and file system events stop their work so you can remove your drive. And improved dialogs assist you in finding which applications are using the drive making it easier to know, what to close in order to safely disconnect the drive. 

• The expose, Apple’s system for finding a window on a scattered desktop, is now integrated with Dock  with the following add on:  

1. Thumbnails of all the windows, corresponding to the application that we click on the dock, opens and quickly gets unshuffled so that we can easily select the window we want to using  Tab.
2. Minimized window appears as smaller icon below the other window.
3. Windows are spring loaded so that we can drag and drop items between windows.
4. For a better and easy view of all items in the stack, stacks are now scrollable in grid view.
5. Windows are aligned in an organized grid. 

• Safari 4 : 

1. Safari in snow leopard is crash proof. If a plug-in crashes, the entire browser will not collapse.
2. The snow leopard safari has the ability to judge if a site is fraudulent or not. In case of a site being fraudulent, a warning pops up. 

• QuickTime X 

1. The interface that appears while a movie is played on the player, auto fades on moving the mouse away from the window.
2. It allows recording a video from webcam, audio and capturing the happenings on screen with few clicks. 

• The over all system related improvements : 

1. Snow Leopard makes shutting down 80% faster and waking up twice as fast also coupling it with the screen locking facility.
2. It has a smart feature that can download and update the latest driver from the internet for the new printer that we plug-in.
3. It natively supports Cisco IPSec VPN connection.
4. Snow Leopard enables Time machine to reduce the time it takes to complete the initial back up to time capsule by 80%.
5. It introduces 4 new fonts : Menlo, Heiti SC and TC , Hiragino Sans GB
6. Inclusion of Bi-directional text, a blessing for people who use Hebrew and Arabic.
7. Boot camps enable us to access the files in our Mac OS X partition from windows. 

System configuration required to support Snow Leopard: 

• Processor Type : Intel
• Min RAM size : 1GB
• Min Hard Drive space : 5GB
• Peripheral/interface device : DVD-ROM 

Pricing: 

• Intel based Mac systems, with Mac OS X 10.5 ‘Leopard’ running on it, can upgrade it to snow leopard by spending US$29 for a single user and US$49 for 5 computers that comes in a family pack.
• If you are using any of the versions older than Leopard, you need to buy a Mac Box Set which will cost $169. 

Drawback:  

One of the constraints with Snow Leopard is that it is compatible only with Intel Macs only, and for PowerPC users it’s still a distant dream. Also, a few of the test results say that it is little slower than older version of leopards. 

With Windows 7 launch in pipe line, it will be an interesting competition in the world of operating systems, and a win-win situation for all computer geeks.