Apple Announces Release Date For Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard

16th Oct 2007

Apple Inc. have finally announced a release date for Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard - 26th October 2007.

Originally slated to be released in Spring 2007, Apple now aim to keep to their revised promise of an October 2007 release. Apple appears to have squashed the last remaining high priority bugs in order to meet their deadline - Leopard was only declared Gold Master this week.

Amongst the promised 316 new features (6 of which are new screensavers...), Leopard promises some significant new developments. Here are a few:

• Desktop. The redesigned 3D Dock creates luminous reflections of application icons, and the new Stacks feature is a quick and easy way to access files. With just one click of your mouse, the contents of a Stack instantly fan into an elegant arc from the Dock. Leopard directs downloaded email attachments and web content to a stack to maintain a clutter-free desktop. Users can also create their own Stacks for quick access to folders, documents, or applications.

• Finder. The Finder makes it easy to visually flip through your documents and find exactly what you’re looking for using Cover Flow, the pioneering feature familiar to iTunes users. The new sidebar with simplified file organization makes it easy to access files and folders on your own Mac as well as other Mac or PC systems on your home network. .Mac members can also use the new Back to My Mac feature to browse and access files on their Mac over the Internet. No matter where content is located, you can flip through it using Cover Flow in the Finder.

• Quick Look. With Quick Look in Leopard, you can instantly view your photos, music, movies, and documents without opening the application that created them. You can resize the Quick Look window, scroll through multipage documents, and even go full screen.

• Time Machine. Time Machine is a revolutionary way to protect a consumer’s digital life. With just a one-click setup, Time Machine automatically keeps an up-to-date copy of everything on the Mac.* In the event a file is lost, users can search back through time to find deleted files, applications, photos, and other digital media and then instantly restore the file. If it’s ever necessary, Leopard can also easily restore an entire system from the Time Machine data on an external drive.

• Mail. In Leopard, Mail plays an even more central role in your life thanks to its Stationery templates that bring style and elegance to your email, Notes, and even To-Do lists that can change as often as your errands do.

• iChat, the easiest-to-use video conferencing application available today, makes video chats even richer in Leopard with Photo Booth effects, including fun distortions and video back- drops that can instantly make users appear to be anywhere they choose. iChat now makes it easy to show photos, presentations, videos, or files in a video conference, or even let someone else view and operate their computer remotely to get the most out of their Mac.

• Spaces. This feature helps you group applications and document windows together to complete particular tasks and then instantly switch between spaces.

• Safari. The fastest browser on any platform is now improved in Leopard with better tab control and improved Find capabilities. With Web Clip, you can download a widget from any portion of a web page and add it to your Dashboard.

• Parental Controls. Improved Parental Controls in Leopard, help parents manage their kids’ online activities by identifying unsuitable content before allowing website access, managing bedtime and time limits, and recording activity logs that parents can view from any Mac on the home network.

Leopard will retail in the UK for GBP 85.00 inc. VAT.