Apple’s Mac OS X10.6 (Snow Leopard) to debut at WWDC

Apple is ready to deliver its Mac OS X10.6 (Snow Leopard) operating system first announced by founder Steve Jobs at Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) in 2008. The system was to be designed to offer a slew of improved features including quicker installation, improved user experience and less space usage.

The system which will probably be unveiled at WWDC 2009 has all the features and according to analysts, the new system has been built to offer everything that Apple promised and more. Some of the improvements that Apple has delivered for an enhanced user experience include:

Zippier Finder
Snow Leopard's finder is an improvement over Leopard's Finder - it is quicker to respond to requests. It has been optimised for 64-bit processing and though it is only a matter of milliseconds of improvement in response, it is an improvement nonetheless.

Other improvements have been made in ejection systems for external drives and optical discs that, instead of flashing a cryptic error message when you inadvertently leave a file from your discs open tell you what application it is and how to quit it.

Optimised QuickTime X
Apple has also worked on QuickTime optimising it to take full advantage of 64-bit technology. Additionally, it now uses capabilities of Nvidia GeForce 9400M integrated graphics processor to unlock video content compressed as per the H264 standard.

The feature frees up the main processor in your Mac for other tasks.

Preview Plus
With the improvement in this feature users can not only get previews of printed pages but much else besides. For instance copy pasting text from a pdf file into a word processor has now become hassle-free thanks to a feature that allows users to select how to arrange the text in their word file after the pasting.

Smart screen grabbing
Snow Leopard now makes looking around for Mac screen grabs a thing of the past as it labels grabs with the date and time they were taken making it a cinch for users to find what they want.

Like all Apple products the new system has been eagerly anticipated and was originally slated fro a September release. However, the rumour mills started running overtime and credited Apple with 'accidentally' listing a Mac Box Set version of the operating system on its Apple store yesterday promising shipments within 24 hours. The Box Set was supposed to include Mac OS X with iLife '09 and iWorks '09 retailing at $169.

But according to the latest reports the OS has been listed on Apple's UK site for shipping by 28 August at a price of £7.95. But that is'nt true.

According to the site, the shipping date is still September though other sites assert it is August.