Mac OS X Snow Leopard

David Pogue on the new operating system from Apple, Snow Leopard, that is officially released today!

Mac OS X version 10.6 (also known as Snow Leopard) is the next operating system by Apple. Apple’s CEO Steve Jobs first announced Snow Leopard at WWDC on June 8, 2008, and it was privately demonstrated to developers by Senior Vice President of Software Engineering, Bertrand Serlet.

A first public demonstration was given on WWDC 2009 by Serlet and Phil Schiller, Senior Vice President of Worldwide Marketing.

The update to Mac OS X will focus on improving performance, efficiency and reducing its overall memory footprint, rather than new end-user features. This will also be the first Mac OS release dating back to System 7.1.2 that does not support the PowerPC architecture, as Apple now intends to focus on its current line of Intel-based products.

Developer previews were seeded to developers beginning shortly after the initial announcement.

Mac OS X Snow Leopard Specs

Release date August 28, 2009

Current version 10.6 (August 28, 2009)

Source model Closed source (with open source components)

License APSL and Apple EULA

Kernel type 32-bit or 64-bit Hybrid kernel

Update method Apple Software Update

Platform support x86, x86-64