Mac OS X Version 10.6 Snow Leopard

Apple's Mac OS X Version 10.6 Snow Leopard is due out in September. Snow Leopard can be purchased as an upgrade to OS X 10.5 Leopard or purchased as part of the Mac Box Set (which also includes iLife '09 and iWork '09). The Snow Leopard Upgrade requires an Intel-based Mac.

Desktop

• The desktop has a semitransparent menu bar and a reflective 3D Dock that perfectly frame your desktop picture - whether you use one of the beautiful included images or customize it with a favorite from your iPhoto library.
• Stacks - a Dock item that gives you fast access to a folder of files. When you click a stack, the files within spring from the Dock in a fan or a grid, depending on the number of items (or the preference you set). Leopard starts you off with two premade stacks: one for downloads and the other for documents.

Finder

• Now you can actually see your files in the Finder - not just as icons, but as they really look. Using Cover Flow, you can flip through your documents as easily as you flip through album art in iTunes. Cover Flow displays each file as a large preview of its first page, and you can click through multipage documents or play movies.
• Leopard brings new power to the sidebar. Items are grouped into categories: places, devices, shared computers, and searches - just like the Source list in iTunes.
• Combine Cover Flow with Spotlight for a powerful search tool. Just type your keywords in Spotlight or specify search criteria, then browse through the search results using Cover Flow. You can easily save your searches for future use.
• With shared computers automatically displayed in the sidebar, you can find files on any Mac or PC on your network. You can even use Spotlight and Cover Flow when you search another Mac. When you click a connected Mac, you can use screen sharing (if authorized) which lets you do anything you could do if you were sitting in front of that computer.
• With Back to My Mac and a .Mac account, you can connect to any of your Mac computers at home from any Mac over the Internet. Your home computers appear in the Shared section of the sidebar and you can browse their contents using Cover Flow in the Finder.

Quick Look

• Using Quick Look, you can view the contents of a file without even opening it. Flip through multipage documents. Watch full-screen video. See entire Keynote presentations. With a single click.
• Quick Look works with nearly every file on your system, including images, text files, PDF documents, movies, Keynote presentations, Mail attachments, and Microsoft Word and Excel files.
• You can use Quick Look to your advantage when you're searching for files in Time Machine. Once Time Machine locates the file you're looking for, use Quick Look to verify its contents. Then restore with a click.

Time Machine

• Time Machine is the breakthrough automatic backup that's built right into Mac OS X. It keeps an up-to-date copy of everything on your Mac - digital photos, music, movies, TV shows, and documents.
• To start using Time Machine, all you have to do is connect an external drive to your Mac.
• Time Machine not only keeps a spare copy of every file, it remembers how your system looked on a given day - so you can revisit your Mac as it appeared in the past.
• Time Machine restores individual files, complete folders, iPhoto libraries, and Address Book contacts. You can even use Time Machine to restore your entire computer if need be.
• Following the initial backup where every file is copied, Time Machine makes only incremental backups - copying just the files that have changed since the previous backup.
• Every hour, every day, an incremental backup of your Mac is made automatically as long as your backup drive is attached to your Mac. Time Machine saves the hourly backups for the past 24 hours, daily backups for the past month, and weekly backups for everything older than a month.

Mail

• Mail for Leopard features more than 30 professionally designed stationery templates that make a virtual keepsake out of every email you send. From invitations to birthday greetings, stationery templates feature coordinated layouts, fonts, colors, and drag-and-drop photo placement from your iPhoto library.
• Mail lets you write handy notes you can access from anywhere. Brainstorm ideas, jot down meeting notes, scribble a phone number — notes can include graphics, colored text, and attachments. Group notes into folders or create Smart Mailboxes that group them for you. Since your notes folder acts like an email mailbox, you can retrieve notes from any Mac or PC using an IMAP mail service like .Mac or AOL.
• Forget manually adding a new item to your to-do list every time an email hits your inbox. Simply highlight text in an email, then click the To Do button to create a to-do from a message. Include a due date, set an alarm, or assign priorities. Every to-do includes a link to the original email or note, and to-dos automatically appear in iCal, complete with any changes you make.
• With smarter relevance ranking in Spotlight, you'll find the right email at the top of the search results list.

iChat

• With the new video backdrops built into iChat, you can make it look like you're chatting from the Eiffel Tower, under the sea, or from the moon. You can also create your own custom backdrops by dragging a picture or video from iPhoto or the Finder into the video effects window. Backdrops even show up on the screens of buddies who don't have Leopard.
• Transform your video chats using new Photo Booth effects.
• Put on a photo slideshow, click through a Keynote presentation, or play a movie - all remotely, in full screen, accompanied by a video feed of you hosting - while your buddy looks on. You can show any file on your system that works with Quick Look.
• Thanks to iChat screen sharing, you and your buddy can observe and control a single desktop with iChat, making it a cinch to collaborate with a colleague, browse the web with a friend, or pick plane seats with your spouse. Share your own desktop or your buddy's — you both have control at all times. And iChat automatically initiates an audio chat when you start a screen sharing session, so you can talk things through while you're at it.
• You can save your audio and video chats with iChat recording. Before recording starts, iChat notifies your buddies and asks for their permission to record. When you're done chatting, iChat stores your audio chats as AAC files and video chats as MPEG-4 files so you can play them in iTunes or QuickTime.

Spaces

• Use Spaces to group your application windows. Leopard gives you a space for everything and makes it easy to switch between your spaces.
• Organize each space just the way you want it. Simply open an application in a space or drag a window from one space to another in the bird's-eye view. It's that easy to organize and reorganize. Want to reorder your spaces? Just shift a space and every window in it comes along for the ride.
• Moving from space to space is easy. When you're in the bird's-eye view, select the space you want or toggle between spaces using the arrow keys.
• Configure your spaces by visiting the Expose & Spaces pane in System Preferences. Add rows and columns until you have all the real estate you need. Arrange your spaces as you see fit, then choose the function keys you want to control them.

Safari

• Now the fastest on the Mac, with page load speeds that outperform every other major browser on the Mac.
• Type a word into the new Find banner below the Bookmarks Bar, and Safari shows you the number of matches and brightly highlights matching terms while dimming the rest of the page.
• With tabbed browsing in Safari, you can open and switch between multiple web pages in a single window. Drag and drop your tabs to rearrange them, open one in a new browser window, or merge all your current windows into one tabbed window.
• The new PDF controls in Safari let you zoom in and out, save a PDF file, or open one in Preview - all from the comfort of your browser.
• Safari lets you resize text fields on any website, just by grabbing the corner of the field. Resize a field and the web page reflows to make room.
• Now you can turn any web page into a Dashboard widget. Click the Web Clip button next to the address field in Safari and select exactly what you want your new widget to display. Then click Add, and Safari sends your Web Clip widget to Dashboard, where you can view it alongside your other widgets.

Boot Camp

• Leopard even lets you run Windows if there's a PC application you need to use. Just get a copy of Windows and start up Boot Camp, now included with Leopard.
• Boot Camp supports the most popular 32-bit releases of Windows XP and Windows Vista. When you use either operating system on your Mac, your Windows applications will run at native speed. Windows applications have full access to multiple processors and multiple cores, accelerated 3D graphics, and high-speed connections like USB, FireWire, Wi-Fi, and Gigabit Ethernet.
• When you're ready for Windows, the Boot Camp Assistant sets up your hard drive for you. It leaves all your Mac data in place while it creates a separate partition on your drive for Windows, and then begins the installation process.
• When you install Windows using Boot Camp, you won't need to search the Internet for drivers or burn a disc. After you run Boot Camp, simply insert the Leopard DVD to install the necessary drivers. Everything you need to make your Mac work with Windows is right there. When you use a Windows application, you'll have full access to unique Mac features.
• After you've installed Windows using Boot Camp, you can start up your Mac using either operating system. Simply hold down the Option key when you power up and choose one or the other.

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