Mac OS X Snow Leopard

Mac OS X Snow Leopard

Refined, not reinvented.

Mac OS X is renowned for its simplicity, its reliability, and its ease of use. So when it came to designing Snow Leopard, Apple engineers had a single goal: to make a great thing even better. They searched for areas to refine, further simplify, and speed up — from little things like ejecting external drives to big things like installing the OS. In many cases, they elevated great to amazing. Here are just a few examples of how your Mac experience was fine-tuned.

A more advanced, more nimble Finder.

The Finder has been completely rewritten in Cocoa to take advantage of all the modern technologies in Mac OS X, including 64-bit support and Grand Central Dispatch. It’s more responsive from top to bottom, with snappier performance throughout the Finder. And it includes new features such as customizable Spotlight search options and an enhanced icon view that lets you thumb through a multipage document or watch a QuickTime movie.

New look, new features for Exposé and Stacks.

Exposé is refined and more convenient. It’s now integrated in the Dock, so you can just click and hold an application icon in the Dock and all the windows for that application will unshuffle so you can quickly change to another one. Exposé also has a whole new look. Windows are displayed in an organized grid, making it even easier to find what you’re looking for. And stacks — Dock items that give you fast access to a folder of files — are now scrollable, so you can easily view all items. You can also navigate through folders in a stack to see all the files inside it.

Quicker Time Machine backup.

Introduced in Mac OS X Leopard, the revolutionary Time Machine made backing up your hard drive easy for the first time. Time Capsule took backup even further with its wireless hard drive that works seamlessly with Time Machine. Now Snow Leopard makes Time Machine up to 80 percent faster and reduces the time it takes to complete your initial backup to Time Capsule.

Faster to wake up and shut down.

With Snow Leopard, your Mac wakes from sleep up to twice as quickly when you have screen locking enabled. And shutting down is up to 80 percent faster, saving precious moments when you’re trying to head home or to the airport.

Faster, more reliable installation.

Upgrading your Mac has never been easier. For Snow Leopard, the entire process has been simplified, streamlined, and is up to 50 percent faster, yet more comprehensive and reliable. For example, Snow Leopard checks your applications to make sure they’re compatible and sets aside any programs known to be incompatible. In case a power outage interrupts your installation, it can start again without losing any data.

Smaller footprint.

Snow Leopard takes up less than half the disk space of the previous version, freeing about 7GB for you — enough for about 1,750 more songs or a few thousand more photos.

Another leap forward for QuickTime.

QuickTime X is the next-generation media technology that powers the audio and video experience in Mac OS X Snow Leopard. It includes a completely new QuickTime Player application with a clean, uncluttered design, a new trimming interface, and easy uploads to YouTube and MobileMe. And it delivers more efficient media playback, HTTP-based live streaming, and greater color accuracy.

Innovative Chinese character input.

Until Snow Leopard, if you wanted to enter Chinese characters on a computer, you had to type in the phonetic spelling of Chinese words and the computer would convert them into proper Chinese characters. Snow Leopard offers a breakthrough new way to enter characters: You draw them right on the Multi-Touch trackpad in your Mac notebook. They’ll appear on the screen in a new input window, which recommends characters based on what you drew and lets you choose the right one. The input window even offers suggestions for subsequent characters based on what you chose.

More reliable, higher-resolution iChat.

Having a video chat using iChat is more reliable and more accessible than ever in Snow Leopard.4 It includes technology to address many common router incompatibilities that can interfere with connections. And if iChat can’t make a direct connection, it will use the AIM relay server to create a successful chat session.

Now more people can have high-resolution, 640-by-480-pixel video chats, because the technical requirements are less demanding: You need only one-third the upstream bandwidth previously required — 300 Kbps instead of 900 Kbps. And finally, iChat Theater now offers 640-by-480 resolution, four times greater than before.

The right service at the right time.

The Services menu in Mac OS X lets you use features of one application while working in another. In Snow Leopard, services are more simplified, streamlined, and helpful. The Services menu is contextual, so it shows just the services appropriate for the application you’re using or content you’re viewing rather than all available services. You can access services with a right click of your mouse or Control-click of your trackpad. You can configure the menu to show only the services you want, and you can even create your own services using Automator.

Automatic updates for printer drivers.

Snow Leopard makes sure you always have the most up-to-date driver so you can get the most from your printer. When you plug in a printer, Mac OS X can download the latest driver available over the Internet. And it periodically checks to make sure it has the latest driver. If not, it downloads the newest version through Software Update. Easy.

Automatic time zone setup.

If you’re traveling around the world, the last thing you want to worry about is whether your computer is set to the correct time zone. Snow Leopard takes care of that for you. Using the Core Location technology, it locates known Wi-Fi hotspots to set the time zone automatically, so you’ll always know the right time no matter where you are.

Easy PDF text selection.

Here’s an enhancement that exemplifies the pursuit of perfection. When using a PDF viewer such as Preview, have you ever tried to copy text from a PDF document that has more than one column? It’s almost impossible. Instead of selecting only the text you want, your cursor selects all the text across the page, so you end up with a mix of words from every column.

Mac OS X Snow Leopard applies sophisticated artificial intelligence algorithms to fix the problem. It analyzes the layout of each page in the PDF to identify columns of text. So when you use the cursor to select text, you get only the words you want. That’s a real time-saver.

Faster, more powerful Safari.

Safari 4 is the latest version of the blazing-fast web browser. It renders web pages at high speed and delivers a range of new features, including full history search, smart address and search fields, an innovative way to display your top sites, industry-leading support for web standards, and more.

With Snow Leopard, Safari 4 delivers up to 50 percent faster JavaScript performance thanks to its 64-bit support. In addition, Safari is even more resistant to crashes. It turns out that the number one cause of crashes in Mac OS X is browser plug-ins. So Apple engineers redesigned Safari to make plug-ins run separately. If a plug-in crashes on a web page, Safari will keep running.

More reliable disk eject.

Snow Leopard improves the reliability of ejecting discs and external drives. Sometimes when an application or process is using the files on a drive, Mac OS X prevents you from ejecting it, but you don’t always know why. In Snow Leopard, you’ll get fewer of those errors and when you do get them, you’ll see exactly which application is using the drive, so you can quit it and eject the drive properly.

More efficient file sharing.

The Bonjour technology in every Mac makes file and media sharing virtually effortless. Now Bonjour in Snow Leopard makes sharing more energy efficient. If you have a computer in your home or office that shares files — like media files for your Apple TV — you have to leave the computer on all the time, which isn’t very energy efficient. With Snow Leopard and a compatible AirPort Extreme or Time Capsule base station, however, your computer can go to sleep yet continue to share its files with other computers and devices, waking when you need it and sleeping when you don’t.

Mac OS X. It's what makes a Mac a Mac.

Mac OS X is the world’s most advanced operating system. Built on a rock-solid UNIX foundation and designed to be simple and intuitive, it’s what makes the Mac innovative, highly secure, compatible, and easy to use. Quite simply, there is nothing else like it.

Power of UNIX. Simplicity of the Mac.

Mac OS X is both easy to use and incredibly powerful. Everything — from the desktop you see when you start up your Mac to the applications you use every day — is designed with simplicity and elegance in mind. So whether you’re browsing the web, checking your email, or video chatting with a friend on another continent,* getting things done is at once easy to learn, simple to perform, and fun to do. Of course, making amazing things simple takes seriously advanced technologies, and Mac OS X is loaded with them. Not only is it built on a rock-solid, time-tested UNIX foundation that provides unparalleled stability, it also delivers incredible performance, stunning graphics, and industry-leading support for Internet standards.

Perfect integration of hardware and software.

Since the software on every Mac is created by the same company that makes the Mac itself, you get an integrated system in which everything works together perfectly. The advanced technologies in the operating system take full advantage of the 64-bit, multicore processors and GPUs to deliver the greatest possible performance. The built-in iSight camera works seamlessly with the iChat software so you can start a video chat with a click. Your Mac notebook includes a Multi-Touch trackpad that supports pinching, swiping, and other gestures. And the OS communicates with the hardware to deliver incredible battery life by spinning down the hard drive when it’s inactive, by intelligently deciding whether the CPU or GPU is best for a task, and by automatically dimming the screen in low-light conditions.

Elegant interface and stunning graphics.

The most striking feature of a Mac is its elegant user interface, made possible by graphics technologies that are built to leverage the advanced graphics processor in your Mac. These technologies provide the power for things like multiway chatting, real-time reflections, and smooth animations. Fonts on the screen look beautiful and extremely readable. A soft drop shadow makes it clear at a glance which window is active and which ones are in the background. You can preview just about any type of file using Quick Look, and because the previews are high resolution, you can actually read the text. Built-in support for the PDF format means you can view or create PDFs from almost any application in the system.

Highly secure by design.

Mac OS X doesn’t get PC viruses. And with virtually no effort on your part, Mac OS X protects itself from other malicious applications. It was built for the Internet in the Internet age, offering a variety of sophisticated technologies that help keep you safe from online threats. Because every Mac ships with a secure configuration, you don’t have to worry about understanding complex settings. Even better, it won’t slow you down with constant security alerts and sweeps. And Apple responds quickly to online threats and automatically delivers security updates directly to your Mac.

Built for compatibility.

The versatility and power of Mac OS X make it compatible in almost any environment, including Windows networks. It works with virtually all of today’s digital cameras, printers, and other peripherals without the need to manually download separate drivers. It opens popular file types such as JPG, MP3, and Microsoft Word, Excel, and PowerPoint documents. In addition, Mac OS X includes built-in support for the industry-standard PDF format, so you can read and create PDFs from almost any application in the system — perfect for sharing work with colleagues whether they use a Mac or a PC. If you want to run Windows on your Mac, you can do that, too. And Mac OS X Snow Leopard is the only operating system with built-in support for the latest version of Microsoft Exchange Server, so you can use your Mac at home and at work and have all your messages, meetings, and contacts in one place.

Innovation for everyone.

Mac OS X comes standard with a wide range of assistive technologies that help people with disabilities experience what the Mac has to offer — including many features you won’t find in other operating systems at any price. For example, the built-in VoiceOver screen-reading technology makes it possible for those who are blind or have low vision to control their computer using key commands or gestures on a Multi-Touch trackpad. Mac OS X also offers out-of-the-box support for over 40 braille displays, including Bluetooth displays, and many other accessibility features, such as dynamic full-screen magnification, playback of closed captions, and a scalable screen.

Reliable to the core.

The core of Mac OS X is built on the same ultrareliable UNIX foundation that powers industrial-strength servers, helping to ensure that your computing experience remains free from system crashes and compromised performance. Even upgrading your Mac to the next version of Mac OS X is reliable and easy. It checks your applications to make sure they’re compatible and sets aside any programs known to be incompatible. If a power outage interrupts your installation, it can start again without losing any data. Best of all, upgrading doesn’t require reformatting your drive; you can keep all your compatible applications, files, and settings. And if something goes wrong when you’re using your Mac, Time Machine is there to keep automatic backups of everything on your drive.

Fully featured, fully loaded.

Mac OS X comes in a single, full-featured version that includes a large collection of beautifully designed applications. They not only let you surf the web, conduct video and text chats, manage your contacts, and accomplish other day-to-day tasks — they also work together to make you more productive and let you have more fun.

Mac OS X has you covered.

Mac OS X doesn’t get PC viruses. And its built-in defenses help keep you safe from other malware without the hassle of constant alerts and sweeps.

Defense against viruses and other malware.

With virtually no effort on your part, Mac OS X offers a multilayered system of defenses against viruses and other malicious applications, or malware. For example, it prevents hackers from harming your programs through a technique called “sandboxing” — restricting what actions programs can perform on your Mac, what files they can access, and what other programs they can launch. Other automatic security features include Library Randomization, which prevents malicious commands from finding their targets, and Execute Disable, which protects the memory in your Mac from attacks.

The 64-bit applications in Snow Leopard are even more secure from hackers and malware than the 32-bit versions. That's because 64-bit applications can use more advanced security techniques to fend off malicious code.

Always on the alert.

Innocent-looking files downloaded over the Internet may contain dangerous malware in disguise. That’s why files you download using Safari, Mail, and iChat are screened to determine if they contain applications. If they do, Mac OS X alerts you, then warns you the first time you open one. You decide whether to open the application or cancel the attempt. And Mac OS X can use digital signatures to verify that an application hasn’t been changed since it was created.

Stay up to date. Automatically.

When a potential security threat arises, Apple responds quickly by providing software updates and security enhancements that can be downloaded automatically and installed with a click. Apple works with the incident response community, including the Forum of Incident Response and Security Teams (FIRST) and the FreeBSD Security Team, to proactively identify and quickly correct operating system vulnerabilities. In addition, Apple cooperates closely with organizations such as the Computer Emergency Response Team Coordination Center (CERT/CC).

Easy to customize.

With Mac OS X, it’s easy to customize and use security features. Setting up secure file sharing, for example, involves a quick trip to System Preferences. FileVault lets you encrypt all the files in your home folder with just a few clicks and a password of your choosing. The firewall comes preconfigured to block online intruders, but it’s easy to make whatever changes you want.

Exercise parental control.

As a parent, you want your kids to have a safe and happy experience on the computer. Mac OS X keeps an eye out even when you can’t. With a simple setup in Parental Controls preferences, you can manage, monitor, and control the time your kids spend on the Mac, the sites they visit, and the people they chat with.

Don’t go phishing.

Phishing is a form of fraud in which online thieves try to acquire sensitive information such as user names, passwords, and credit card details by creating fake websites that look like legitimate companies. The antiphishing technology in Safari protects you from such scams by detecting these fraudulent websites. If you visit a suspicious site, Safari disables the page and displays an alert warning you about its suspect nature.

Surf safely.

Mac OS X makes it easy to stay safe online, whether you’re checking your bank account, sending confidential email, or sharing files with friends and coworkers. Features such as Password Assistant help you lock out identity thieves who are after personal data, while built-in encryption technologies protect your private information and communications.

Security without the hassle.

Mac OS X won’t slow you down with constant security alerts and sweeps. Every Mac ships with a secure configuration so you don’t have to worry about understanding complex settings. Just turn your Mac on and start working. When you need to be aware of something, it will let you know. And if you want to change the security configuration, just open System Preferences and make any adjustments.

Built for compatibility.

Mom always said, “Play nice with others.” Your computer should, too. With Mac OS X, you can use Microsoft Office, connect to most printers and cameras, join PC networks, and even run Windows.

Office on your Mac.

A native version of Microsoft Office is available for Mac OS X, and it features a Mac-friendly interface that lets you create documents with Word, presentations with PowerPoint, and spreadsheets with Excel just like on a Windows PC. It’s compatible with Microsoft Office for Windows, so you can easily share documents with friends and colleagues. Even if you don’t have Office installed on your Mac, you can use Quick Look to take a peek at Office documents without having to open an application.

Microsoft Exchange Server support.

With Snow Leopard, the Mac is the only computer with built-in support for the latest version of Microsoft Exchange Server. So you can use your Mac — with all the features and applications you love — at home and at work and have all your messages, meetings, and contacts in one place.

Industry-standard bearer.

Thanks to its support for industry standards, Mac OS X works with virtually all email providers and websites. It also lets you view the most common file types, including Office documents, PDFs, images, text files, MP3s, videos, ZIP files, and more.

So if you’re moving files from a PC or if your friends and colleagues send you files, you can rest assured they’ll work on your Mac. And if you buy your Mac at an Apple Retail Store, an Apple Genius can transfer your files from your PC for you and even recycle your old PC.

Relax. Your camera, printer, and mouse work, too.

Almost any device that connects to a computer via USB, audio cable, or Bluetooth will work with a Mac. That includes digital cameras, external hard drives, printers, keyboards, speakers, and more.

You can even use a right-click mouse with a Mac. And with thousands of device drivers included with Mac OS X, you can start using these devices as soon as you plug them in — no need to manually download additional software.

Connect to PCs over a network.

The Finder not only lets you browse files on your Mac, it also makes it easy to find files on other computers — both Mac and PC — on your home network. Computers that allow file sharing automatically show up in the Shared section of the Finder sidebar, allowing you to browse files and folders you have permission to view.

It runs Windows, too.

Have a Windows application you need to use once in a while? No problem. Every new Mac lets you install Windows XP and Vista and run them at native speeds, using a built-in utility called Boot Camp.

Setup is simple and safe for your Mac files. After you’ve completed the installation, you can boot up your Mac using either Mac OS X or Windows. (That’s why it’s called Boot Camp.) Or if you want to run Windows and Mac applications at the same time — without rebooting — you can install Windows using VMware or Parallels software.

Accessibility comes standard.

Every Mac comes standard with a wide range of assistive technologies that help people with disabilities enjoy the power and simplicity of the Mac. We call this Universal Access, and it includes many features you won’t find in other operating systems at any price. In Mac OS X, they’re built right in.

Built-in screen reading.

Mac OS X is the first operating system to include as a standard feature an advanced screen-reading technology that makes it possible for those who are blind or have low vision to control their computer. Called VoiceOver, it describes aloud what appears on your computer screen: text in documents, windows, menus, dialogs, and more. But it’s much more than simply a text-to-speech tool. Using VoiceOver, you can control your Mac with a keyboard, a braille display, or a Multi-Touch trackpad — instead of a mouse.

Web surfing made easier.

VoiceOver makes surfing the web much easier. It can begin reading an entire web page automatically after the page loads, or it can summarize the page for you, reading only the title, number of tables, headers, links, form elements, and other items. Mac OS X also offers a unique virtual control called a rotor. When you turn it — by rotating two fingers on your Multi-Touch trackpad — you control how VoiceOver moves through the page, such as by header, link, frame, table, or form element. And because many web pages are difficult to convey through a screen reader, Apple invented new technologies to comprehend and interpret the visual design of web pages, then use the information to assign virtual tags called “auto web spots” to mark important locations on the page. On a newspaper website, for example, there might be an auto web spot for each lead story, another for a box containing weather or sports scores, and so on. You can jump from web spot to web spot with a keystroke or the flick of a finger.

Introducing Alex.

The voice in VoiceOver is called Alex, and it uses advanced Apple technologies to deliver natural intonation in English even at extraordinarily fast speaking rates. While most text-to-speech (TTS) systems analyze and synthesize text one sentence at a time, Mac OS X analyzes text a paragraph at a time and deciphers the context more accurately. In addition, Alex more closely matches the nuances of human speech, so you can more easily understand the meaning of longer text passages in books, articles, and news stories.

Controlling your Mac with touch and sound.

New in Snow Leopard is the ability to control VoiceOver with gestures on your Mac notebook’s Multi-Touch trackpad. The trackpad surface can represent the active window on your computer screen. So you can touch to hear the item under your finger, drag to hear items continuously as you move your finger, and flick with one finger to move to the next or previous item. For example, you can drag your finger around the trackpad to learn how items are arranged in a web page, a spreadsheet, a presentation, or any document with text.

Screen magnification and more.

Mac OS X also allows you to magnify the screen by up to 40x with amazing quality and without affecting system performance. You can also adjust the characteristics of your display, such as switching the screen to white-on-black or black-on-white.

Braille made simple.

The Mac is the only computer that supports braille displays right out of the box, with drivers for over 40 models, including wireless Bluetooth displays. Just connect one and start using it — no additional software installation necessary. A new feature called braille mirroring enables multiple braille displays to be connected to one computer simultaneously — perfect for classroom settings.

Communicating with iChat.

An Internet-based text, audio, and video conferencing application, iChat is included with your Mac and lets you converse and interact with others even when you’re miles or continents apart. iChat works with AIM (the largest instant messaging community in the U.S.), MobileMe, Google Talk, and Jabber. With iChat, you can communicate with buddies who use either a Mac or a Windows PC.

Thanks to its high-quality video and frame rate capabilities, iChat is ideal for those who communicate using sign language and is a great way to take advantage of hands-on video relay services such as HOVRS.com. Participants can clearly see the finger and hand movements of everyone taking part in the chat. This allows you to communicate from afar with the same range of emotions that you would use when you’re in the same room together.

Open and closed captioning.

Mac OS X supports open- and closed-captioning in QuickTime Player and DVD Player. You can set these applications to display open or closed captioning with a simple two-step process. If you download captioned content from the iTunes Store, you’ll be able to play it back with captions on iPhone, iPod classic, iPod nano (4th generation), iPod touch,and Apple TV; in QuickTime Player (for Mac and Windows); and in iTunes (for Mac and Windows).

Alerts and audio.

To let you know that the system or an application requires your attention, you can have Mac OS X flash the entire screen instead of playing an audio tone as an alert. And if your hearing is limited in one ear, there’s a setting to route right- and left-channel audio into both speakers or headphones, so you can hear both channels at all times.

Simpler keyboard and mouse navigation.

Sticky Keys lets you enter key combinations — such as Command-Q (for Quit) or Shift-Option-8 (for the ° symbol) — by pressing them in sequence instead of simultaneously. Slow Keys helps you avoid typing errors and unintended multiple keystrokes. And Mouse Keys lets you control your mouse pointer using the keys on a numeric keypad instead of the mouse. if you find it easier to use a pointing device than a keyboard, you can use an onscreen keyboard to enter text instead. It floats above other applications, so you can’t lose it, and it can be displayed small or large.

Automating common tasks.

If you often perform complex, routine tasks, such as renaming files or resizing images, you can have Automator do them for you, saving you untold keystrokes and mouse clicks. You simply tell Automator which actions to perform and in which order by dragging them into a workflow, and then Automator will perform your task as often as you want. Or Automator can record your actions as you do them and save them to use later.

Customizing your input.

Because Mac OS X supports the USB standard, you can use your favorite USB keyboard or mouse with your Mac even if it was designed for a PC. You can also connect alternative input devices that simulate standard mouse and keyboard input. And you can even customize your keyboard layout — QWERTY, Dvorak, or others — and create your own keyboard shortcuts to work exactly the way you want them to.

Xcode: The centerpiece of developer tools.

The centerpiece of the developer tools included with Mac OS X is the Xcode application, which provides an elegant, powerful user interface for creating and managing software development projects in Mac OS X. Use Xcode to organize and edit your source files, view documentation, build your product, debug your code, and optimize your product’s performance. Xcode in Snow Leopard also helps you program for Grand Central Dispatch, OpenCL, and other new technologies. Xcode is a highly customizable integrated development environment with features that let you create an easy-to-use, efficient working environment.

Interface Builder: Create your user interface.

Interface Builder helps you design the user interfaces of your applications. With this application, you create your user interface by picking controls from a library of configurable elements and arranging them with the help of layout guides. You can add impressive Core Animation-based behaviors to your application, and you can include transition effects between UI states, or 3D shadows to your controls, by simply clicking a few buttons. In addition, Interface Builder makes it easy to troubleshoot user interfaces, because the difficult task of positioning each control and connecting it to the appropriate methods in your source code is accomplished through an elegant and effective graphical user interface.

Instruments: View the performance of your application.

Performance-monitoring tools have long been an essential part of the developer’s toolset. The limitation of those tools, however, is that they could only give you part of the picture of how your application runs. Selecting the best tool for the job could be tricky, and there was no easy way to compare data between tools to see a complete view of the behavior of your application. Instruments in Mac OS X changes all that. It allows you to see multiple aspects of your application’s performance over time. With time-based graphs, you can monitor CPU usage, disk I/O, and memory usage and see how they interact. This gives you a more complete picture of your application’s behavior.

Dashcode: Widget development made easy.

Dashcode in Snow Leopard lets you quickly and easily build elegant and compelling Dashboard widgets. Created to meet the needs of widget developers, Dashcode combines powerful visual layout tools with a code editor, debugger, and comprehensive package management into a world-class integrated development environment. So you can create powerful and useful widgets for yourself, for your organization, or even for distribution to the world.

Scripting languages: Simplify your programming.

With Snow Leopard, Mac OS X makes it easy to use scripting languages as full application development tools. Snow Leopard ships with support for the RubyCocoa Bridge and the PyObjC bridge. These two bridges give developers access not only to system APIs, but to Cocoa frameworks such as AppKit and Core Data, enabling you to build fully native Mac OS X applications in Ruby or Python. The RubyCocoa and PyObjC bridges allow you to freely mix code written in Objective-C with code written in the scripting language. You can quickly build prototypes and then optimize by implementing performance-critical pieces in Objective-C.

Mac OS X Snow Leopard Up-to-Date Programme

Mac OS X Snow Leopard refines the elegant Mac OS X user experience with lots of little touches and performance improvements that will make using your Mac even more enjoyable. It also includes a few big foundation technologies designed to tap the power of today’s computer hardware and provide a strong base for innovation. If you’ve purchased a qualifying computer or Xserve on or after June 8, 2009 that does not include Mac OS X Snow Leopard, you can upgrade to Mac OS X Snow Leopard for 9€.

This programme ends December 26, 2009. Your completed order form must be postmarked within 90 days of the date of your purchase of a qualifying computer or Xserve (described in this offer) or by December 26, 2009, whichever is earlier.

Expected Product Availability: September 2009

Hardware Up-To-Date

Customers who purchase a qualifying new Mac computer on or after June 8, 2009 that does not include Mac OS X Snow Leopard can upgrade to Snow Leopard for 9€. Remember your completed order form must be postmarked within 90 days of the date of your purchase of a qualifying computer (described in this offer) or by December 26, 2009, whichever is earlier.

To participate in the programme, please fill-in the online order form and follow the instructions. If you already mailed in your order form, you can check your status here.

Multiple Qualifying Computers on a Single Invoice

If you purchased multiple qualifying systems on a single invoice, you can either (1) purchase a Single-User Upgrade Kit for each qualifying product, at a cost of 9€; or (2) purchase fewer Single-User Upgrade Kits and request the Right to Copy for the remaining qualifying products.

Mac OS X Snow Leopard Server Up-To-Date

Snow Leopard Xserve - Unlimited Client

Customers who purchase a qualifying Xserve [ MA882*/A, MB449*/A. Z0E7, Z0FR, Z0GM ] on or after June 8, 2009 that does not include Mac OS X Server v10.6 Snow Leopard Unlimited Client software can upgrade to Mac OS X Server v10.6 Snow Leopard Unlimited Client for 9€. Remember your completed order form must be postmarked within 90 days of the date of your purchase of a qualifying Xserve (described in this offer) or by December 26, 2009, whichever is earlier.

To participate in the programme, please fill-in the online order form and follow the instructions. If you already mailed in your order form, you can check your status here.

Terms and Conditions

Hardware Terms and Conditions

Below are the terms and conditions that govern this programme. Please read before you continue.

This programme entitles the purchaser of a qualifying Mac computer purchased between June 8, 2009, and December 26, 2009, to upgrade to Mac OS X v10.6 Snow Leopard for a Postage & Packing (P&P) Fee. This offer is valid for customers domiciled Czech Republic, French Guiana, Greece, Guadeloupe, Hungary, Martinique, Reunion, Slovakia, Bulgaria, Cyprus, Estonia, Gibraltar, Iceland, Israel, Latvia, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Malta, Romania, San Marino, Slovenia, Turkey, United Arab Emirates, Albania, Algeria, Andorra, Angola, Armenia, Azerbaijan Republic, Bahrain, Benin, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Botswana, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Cape Verde, Chad, Comoros, Croatia, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Djibouti, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Falkland Islands, Faroe Islands, Gabon Republic, Gambia, Greenland, Guinea, Guinea Bissau, Jordan, Kazakhstan, Kenya, Kuwait, Kyrgyzstan, Lesotho, Madagascar, Malawi, Mali, Mauritania, Mauritius, Morocco, Mozambique, Namibia, Niger, Norfolk Island, Oman, Qatar, Republic of the Congo, Rwanda, Saudi Arabia, Senegal, Sierra Leone, Somalia, Svalbard and Jan Mayen Islands, Swaziland, Tajikistan, Tanzania, Togo, Tunisia, Turkmenistan, Uganda, Ukraine, Vatican City State, Yemen and Zambia and valid only in accordance with these Terms and Conditions. Void where prohibited by law or where otherwise restricted. Apple reserves the right to discontinue this programme at any time without notice. Mac OS X updates, which may currently be downloaded from www.apple.com or software update, are not included in this programme. To receive your Mac OS X v10.6 Snow Leopard upgrade, you must complete the order form and provide a photocopy of a dated, itemised sales receipt or packing slip indicating the marketing part number(s) of the qualifying system(s) purchased. Order acknowledgments, packing slips, and purchase order copies are not accepted. The programme ends on December 26, 2009. Completed order form, payment (if using a payment method other than Credit Card), and dated, itemised sales receipt must be postmarked within 90 days of the date of your purchase of the qualifying product, or December 26, 2009, whichever is earlier. You must send the items to the address listed on the completed order form. Internet access and the ability to print your application is required. Cash payments will not be accepted and will be returned to sender. Insufficient payment will not be accepted. Apple is not responsible for a credit card authorisation that is not received from your credit card issuer or for any issues precluding Apple’s ability to charge your credit card for the order. Apple makes no representations about the upgrade(s) made available under this programme and disclaims any and all liability for any claims arising from use of the products acquired in connection with this offer. Upon receipt of your validated order product will be shipped within 24 hours, subject to inventory availability. Delivery times will vary, but are typically between 3-4 weeks.

Expected product availability: September 2009. Apple reserves the right to extend the product availability date and the shipment date for any orders under this programme at Apple’s discretion. This offer is not valid on the purchase of used, auction, or demonstration equipment. Apple reserves the right to change the terms of this offer at any time without notice. No refunds or returns will be allowed. The Mac OS X v10.6 Snow Leopard upgrade kit and the Right to Copy must be used solely with the products that qualify for this offer. This offer is limited to one Mac OS X v10.6 Snow Leopard upgrade kit per qualifying computer purchased. This offer is applicable only to purchases by end users and not by resellers. Keep a copy of these Terms and Conditions as well as your completed order form for your records. Qualifying Apple systems must be purchased from Apple, or an Apple Authorised Reseller Czech Republic, French Guiana, Greece, Guadeloupe, Hungary, Martinique, Reunion, Slovakia, Bulgaria, Cyprus, Estonia, Gibraltar, Iceland, Israel, Latvia, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Malta, Romania, San Marino, Slovenia, Turkey, United Arab Emirates, Albania, Algeria, Andorra, Angola, Armenia, Azerbaijan Republic, Bahrain, Benin, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Botswana, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Cape Verde, Chad, Comoros, Croatia, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Djibouti, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Falkland Islands, Faroe Islands, Gabon Republic, Gambia, Greenland, Guinea, Guinea Bissau, Jordan, Kazakhstan, Kenya, Kuwait, Kyrgyzstan, Lesotho, Madagascar, Malawi, Mali, Mauritania, Mauritius, Morocco, Mozambique, Namibia, Niger, Norfolk Island, Oman, Qatar, Republic of the Congo, Rwanda, Saudi Arabia, Senegal, Sierra Leone, Somalia, Svalbard and Jan Mayen Islands, Swaziland, Tajikistan, Tanzania, Togo, Tunisia, Turkmenistan, Uganda, Ukraine, Vatican City State, Yemen and Zambia. Submissions will not be returned and become the property of Apple. Apple is not responsible for printing errors. Lost, late, mutilated, or misdirected mail are not the responsibility of Apple and will not be considered. This offer is not valid in conjunction with any other Mac OS offer from Apple. By participating in this programme, you are agreeing that you are not acquiring the upgrade for resale. The name and address of the promoter is Apple Sales International, Hollyhill Industrial Estate, Cork, Republic of Ireland.

Snow Leopard Xserve Terms and Conditions

Below are the terms and conditions that govern this programme. Please read before you continue.

This programme entitles the purchaser of a qualifying Xserve (MA882*/A, MB449*/A, Z0E7, Z0FR, Z0GM) that did not include Mac OS X Server v10.6 Snow Leopard Unlimited-Client software purchased between June 8, 2009, and December 26, 2009, to upgrade to Mac OS X Server v10.6 Snow Leopard Unlimited-Client software for a Postage & Packing (P&P) Fee. This offer is valid for customers domiciled in Czech Republic, French Guiana, Greece, Guadeloupe, Hungary, Martinique, Reunion, Slovakia, Bulgaria, Cyprus, Estonia, Gibraltar, Iceland, Israel, Latvia, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Malta, Romania, San Marino, Slovenia, Turkey, United Arab Emirates, Albania, Algeria, Andorra, Angola, Armenia, Azerbaijan Republic, Bahrain, Benin, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Botswana, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Cape Verde, Chad, Comoros, Croatia, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Djibouti, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Falkland Islands, Faroe Islands, Gabon Republic, Gambia, Greenland, Guinea, Guinea Bissau, Jordan, Kazakhstan, Kenya, Kuwait, Kyrgyzstan, Lesotho, Madagascar, Malawi, Mali, Mauritania, Mauritius, Morocco, Mozambique, Namibia, Niger, Norfolk Island, Oman, Qatar, Republic of the Congo, Rwanda, Saudi Arabia, Senegal, Sierra Leone, Somalia, Svalbard and Jan Mayen Islands, Swaziland, Tajikistan, Tanzania, Togo, Tunisia, Turkmenistan, Uganda, Ukraine, Vatican City State, Yemen, and Zambia and valid only in accordance with these Terms and Conditions. Void where prohibited by law or where otherwise restricted. Apple reserves the right to discontinue this programme at any time without notice. Mac OS X updates, which may currently be downloaded from www.apple.com or software update, are not included in this programme. To receive your Mac OS X Server v10.6 Snow Leopard Unlimited-Client software, you must complete the order form and provide a photocopy of a dated, itemised sales receipt or packing slip indicating the marketing part number(s) of the qualifying system(s) purchased. Order acknowledgments, packing slips, and purchase order copies are not accepted. The programme ends on December 26, 2009. Completed order form, payment (if using a payment method other than Credit Card), and dated, itemised sales receipt must be postmarked within 90 days of the date of your purchase of the qualifying product, or December 26, 2009, whichever is earlier. You must send the items to the address listed on the completed order form. Internet access and the ability to print your application is required. Cash payments will not be accepted and will be returned to sender. Insufficient payment will not be accepted. Apple is not responsible for a credit card authorisation that is not received from your credit card issuer or for any issues precluding Apple’s ability to charge your credit card for the order. Apple makes no representations about the upgrade(s) made available under this programme and disclaims any and all liability for any claims arising from use of the products acquired in connection with this offer. Upon receipt of your validated order product will be shipped within 24 hours, subject to inventory availability. Delivery times will vary, but are typically between 3-4 weeks.

Expected product availability: September 2009. Apple reserves the right to extend the product availability date and the shipment date for any orders under this programme at Apple’s discretion. This offer is not valid on the purchase of used, auction, or demonstration equipment. Apple reserves the right to change the terms of this offer at any time without notice. No Refunds or returns will be allowed. The Mac OS X Server v10.6 Snow Leopard Unlimited-Client software kit and the Right to Copy must be used solely with the products that qualify for this offer. This offer is limited to one Mac OS X Server v10.6 Snow Leopard Unlimited-Client software kit per qualifying computer purchased. This offer is applicable only to purchases by end users and not by resellers. Keep a copy of these Terms and Conditions as well as your completed order form for your records. Qualifying Apple systems must be purchased from Apple, or an Apple Authorised Reseller located in Czech Republic, French Guiana, Greece, Guadeloupe, Hungary, Martinique, Reunion, Slovakia, Bulgaria, Cyprus, Estonia, Gibraltar, Iceland, Israel, Latvia, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Malta, Romania, San Marino, Slovenia, Turkey, United Arab Emirates, Albania, Algeria, Andorra, Angola, Armenia, Azerbaijan Republic, Bahrain, Benin, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Botswana, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Cape Verde, Chad, Comoros, Croatia, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Djibouti, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Falkland Islands, Faroe Islands, Gabon Republic, Gambia, Greenland, Guinea, Guinea Bissau, Jordan, Kazakhstan, Kenya, Kuwait, Kyrgyzstan, Lesotho, Madagascar, Malawi, Mali, Mauritania, Mauritius, Morocco, Mozambique, Namibia, Niger, Norfolk Island, Oman, Qatar, Republic of the Congo, Rwanda, Saudi Arabia, Senegal, Sierra Leone, Somalia, Svalbard and Jan Mayen Islands, Swaziland, Tajikistan, Tanzania, Togo, Tunisia, Turkmenistan, Uganda, Ukraine, Vatican City State, Yemen and Zambia. Submissions will not be returned and become the property of Apple. Apple is not responsible for printing errors. Lost, late, mutilated, or misdirected mail are not the responsibility of Apple and will not be considered. This offer is not valid in conjunction with any other Xserve or Mac OS X Server v10.6 Snow Leopard Unlimited-Client software offer from Apple. By participating in this programme, you are agreeing that you are not acquiring the upgrade for resale. The name and address of the promoter is Apple Sales International, Hollyhill Industrial Estate, Cork, Republic of Ireland.

Refined, not reinvented.

A more advanced, more nimble Finder.

New look, new features for Exposé and Stacks.

Quicker Time Machine backup.

Faster to wake up and shut down.

Faster, more reliable installation.

Smaller footprint.

Snow Leopard takes up less than half the disk space of the previous version, freeing about 7GB for you — enough for about 1,750 more songs or a few thousand more photos.

Another leap forward for QuickTime.

Innovative Chinese character input.

More reliable, higher-resolution iChat.

Having a video chat using iChat is more reliable and more accessible than ever in Snow Leopard. It includes technology to address many common router incompatibilities that can interfere with connections. And if iChat can’t make a direct connection, it will use the AIM relay server to create a successful chat session.

The right service at the right time.

Automatic updates for printer drivers.

Automatic time zone setup.

Easy PDF text selection.

Faster, more powerful Safari.

More reliable disk eject.

More efficient file sharing.

64-bit

64-bit computing used to be the province of scientists and engineers, but now this generational shift in computing gives all users the tools to apply the power of 64-bit to speed up everything from everyday applications to the most demanding scientific computations. Although Mac OS X is already 64-bit capable in many ways, Snow Leopard takes the next big step by rewriting nearly all system applications in 64-bit code and by enabling the Mac to address massive amounts of memory. Now Mac OS X is faster, more secure, and completely ready for the future.

The 64-bit transition.

The entire computing industry is moving from 32-bit to 64-bit technology, and it’s easy to see why. Today’s Mac computers can hold up to 32GB of physical memory, but the 32-bit applications that run on them can address only 4GB of RAM at a time. 64-bit computing shatters that barrier by enabling applications to address a theoretical 16 billion gigabytes of memory, or 16 exabytes. It can also enable computers to crunch twice the data per clock cycle, which can dramatically speed up numeric calculations and other tasks. Earlier versions of Mac OS X have offered a range of 64-bit capabilities. Now Snow Leopard takes the next step in the transition from 32-bit to 64-bit.

Built-in applications are now 64-bit.

Nearly all system applications — including the Finder, Mail, Safari, iCal, and iChat — are now built with 64-bit code. So not only are they able to take full advantage of all the memory in your Mac, but the move to 64-bit applications also boosts overall performance. Together with other refinements and improvements in Snow Leopard, this means that just about everything you do — from launching applications like QuickTime to running JavaScript in Safari to opening image files — will feel faster and more responsive.

Ready for the future.

The 64-bit support in Snow Leopard makes Mac OS X completely ready for whatever computing enhancements might arrive in the future. For example, Snow Leopard is ready to support up to 16 terabytes of RAM — about 500 times more than today’s Mac computers can accommodate. That may sound like more RAM than you’ll ever need, but who can predict the requirements of high-performance computers in the future? Mac OS X Snow Leopard comes prepared for anything.

More secure than ever.

Another benefit of the 64-bit applications in Snow Leopard is that they’re even more secure from hackers and malware than the 32-bit versions. That's because 64-bit applications can use more advanced security techniques to fend off malicious code. First, 64-bit applications can keep their data out of harm's way thanks to a more secure function argument-passing mechanism and the use of hardware-based execute disable for heap memory. In addition, memory on the system heap is marked using strengthened checksums, helping to prevent attacks that rely on corrupting memory.

32-bit compatible.

To ensure simplicity and flexibility, Mac OS X still comes in one version that runs both 64-bit and 32-bit applications. So you don’t need to update everything on your system just to run a single 64-bit program. And new 64-bit applications work just fine with your existing storage devices, PCI cards, and Snow Leopard-compatible printers.

Grand Central Dispatch

More cores, not faster clock speeds, drive performance increases in today’s processors. Grand Central Dispatch takes full advantage by making all of Mac OS X multicore aware and optimizing it for allocating tasks across multiple cores and processors. Grand Central Dispatch also makes it much easier for developers to create programs that squeeze every last drop of power from multicore systems.

With CPUs, more cores is better.

In the past, the best way for computer chip makers to improve performance was to turn up the clock speed on the processor. But that generates more heat and consumes more power, which is bad for computers, especially notebooks. So instead the industry has moved to chips with multiple processor cores, which can provide more performance while consuming less power. Today every Mac runs on one or more multicore Intel processors.

Multicore. Multiple challenges.

To take full advantage of these processors, software applications must be programmed using a technology called threads. Software developers use threads to allow multicore processors to work on different parts of a program at the same time. However, each application must do its own threading, which reduces the efficiency of the entire system. And because threads can be difficult to program, many developers don’t invest the effort to make their applications multicore capable. Consequently, lots of applications aren’t as fast as they could be.

Introducing Grand Central Dispatch.

Grand Central Dispatch (GCD) in Mac OS X Snow Leopard addresses this pressing need. It’s a set of first-of-their-kind technologies that makes it much easier for developers to squeeze every last drop of power from multicore systems. With GCD, threads are handled by the operating system, not by individual applications. GCD-enabled programs can automatically distribute their work across all available cores, resulting in the best possible performance whether they’re running on a dual-core Mac mini, an 8-core Mac Pro, or anything in between. Once developers start using GCD for their applications, you’ll start noticing significant improvements in performance.

A finely tuned engine.

Grand Central Dispatch is extremely efficient at what it does. It dynamically scales the workload of an application to account for the number of processors in the computer. And it makes applications more efficient by using only the number of threads required for the work being done. For example, without GCD, if an application needs 20 threads when at maximum capacity, it might set up 20 threads and consume the associated resources even when it has nothing to do. GCD, by contrast, frees resources when it’s not using them, helping to keep the whole system more responsive. Imagine the efficiency and performance gains if every application on your Mac were using GCD.

Built into the core.

Grand Central Dispatch is deeply integrated into Mac OS X Snow Leopard, making it easier for all kinds of applications to take better advantage of multicore processors. In addition, your Mac as a whole becomes more efficient at handling numerous tasks at the same time, resulting in performance gains across the board.

Powerful developer tools.

Developers will program for Grand Central Dispatch using the Xcode tools included with every Mac. They can use the Xcode debugger and Instruments performance analysis tool to get insights into GCD at runtime. These tools make it possible to quickly inspect any GCD work queue, even down to a specific block of executing code, giving developers a complete understanding of their application as GCD efficiently assigns tasks to each available core.

OpenCL

With graphics processors surpassing speeds of a trillion operations per second, they’re capable of considerably more than just drawing pictures. OpenCL in Snow Leopard is a technology that makes it possible for developers to tap the vast gigaflops of computing power currently in the graphics processor and use it for any application.

The skyrocketing power of GPUs.

Over the last few years the performance of graphics processing units (GPUs) has grown exponentially as measured in gigaflops. Today’s fastest GPUs are capable of over one teraflop, as much as the room-size ASCI RED supercomputer of just 12 years ago.

A graphic shift in performance.

Now a new technology in Mac OS X Snow Leopard called OpenCL takes the power of graphics processors and makes it available for general-purpose computing. No longer will graphics processors be limited to graphics-intensive applications such as games and 3D modeling. Instead, once developers begin to use OpenCL in their applications, you’ll experience greatly improved speed in a wide spectrum of applications.

For example, sophisticated financial modeling techniques can be incorporated into desktop accounting software and personal finance software. Media applications can perform complex, intensive operations with larger video and graphics files. Games can have more realistic physics simulations. And scientists and researchers can tackle far more challenging problems using their everyday Mac computers.

Optimized for the task.

OpenCL automatically optimizes for the kind of graphics processor in the Mac, adjusting itself to the available processing power. OpenCL provides consistent numeric precision and accuracy, fixing a problem that has hampered GPU-based programming in the past.

Familiar, C-based language with industry support.

OpenCL stands for Open Computing Language. It’s a C-based programming language with a structure that will be familiar to programmers, who can simply use Xcode developer tools to adapt their programs to work with OpenCL. They don’t have to completely rewrite applications to use OpenCL. They need only rewrite the most performance-intensive parts of their application in OpenCL C. The vast majority of application code can be left unchanged. Best of all, OpenCL is an open standard that’s supported by the biggest names in the industry, including AMD, Intel, and NVIDIA.

QuickTime X

Snow Leopard introduces QuickTime X, a major leap forward that advances modern media and Internet standards. QuickTime X includes a brand-new player application, offers optimized support for modern codecs, and delivers more efficient media playback, making it ideal for any application that needs to play media content.

Another leap forward.

QuickTime X is the next-generation media technology that powers the audio and video experience in Mac OS X Snow Leopard. From its inception in 1991, QuickTime has stood at the forefront of video technologies — first with software-based video, then with Internet video. Now QuickTime X takes another leap forward by building on the amazing media technologies in Mac OS X — such as Core Audio, Core Video, and Core Animation — to deliver enhanced playback, greater efficiency, and higher quality.

A new QuickTime Player.

QuickTime X debuts a brand-new version of QuickTime Player, the standalone application used by millions to watch QuickTime-based video. Using the power of the Core Animation technology in Mac OS X, QuickTime Player offers a clean, uncluttered interface with controls that fade out when they’re not needed. And large thumbnail images make navigating chaptered movies simpler than before.

With a single click, QuickTime Player can now capture audio or video using the built-in camera and microphone in your Mac. You can easily trim media to the perfect length, then send it to iTunes for syncing to an iPhone, iPod, and Apple TV. You can also use QuickTime Player to publish your media to MobileMe or YouTube — without worrying about codec formats or resolutions.

Built for smooth playback.

QuickTime X is optimized for the latest modern media formats — such as H.264 and AAC — through a new media architecture that delivers stutter-free playback of high-definition content on nearly all Snow Leopard-based Mac systems. QuickTime X maximizes the efficiency of modern media playback by using the graphics processor to scale and display video. QuickTime X further increases efficiency by supporting GPU-accelerated video decoding of H.264 files.

Video streaming from any server.

QuickTime X takes Internet video streaming to new levels with support for HTTP live streaming. Unlike other streaming technologies, HTTP live streaming uses the HTTP protocol — the same network technology that powers the web. That means QuickTime X streams audio and video from almost any web server instead of special streaming servers, and it works reliably with common firewall and wireless router settings. HTTP live streaming is designed for mobility and can dynamically adjust movie playback quality to match the available speed of wired or wireless networks, perfect whether the video is watched on a computer or on a mobile device like iPhone or iPod touch.

High performance, high quality.

Because it’s built into the heart of Snow Leopard, QuickTime X uses Mac OS X technologies such as Cocoa, Grand Central Dispatch, and 64-bit computing to deliver greatest-possible performance and enables QuickTime Player to launch up to 2.4x faster. QuickTime X also takes advantage of ColorSync to provide high-quality color reproduction during playback and when sharing media to your iPhone, iPod, or Apple TV.

The trackpad is the screen.

The advanced screen-reading technology in Mac OS X, VoiceOver, now offers a breakthrough new capability: You can control your computer using gestures on a Multi-Touch trackpad even if you can’t see the screen. The trackpad surface on your Mac notebook represents the active window on your computer, so you can touch to hear the item under your finger, drag to hear items continuously as you move your finger, and flick with one finger to move to the next or previous item. You’ll hear how items are arranged on the screen, and you can jump directly to an item just by touching the corresponding location on the trackpad. For example, you can drag your finger around the trackpad to learn how items are arranged in a web page, a spreadsheet, a presentation, or any document with text. The more you touch, the more information you gather.

More braille support, greater collaboration.

The Mac is the only computer that supports braille displays right out of the box. Snow Leopard broadens this built-in support by including the latest drivers for over 40 models, including wireless Bluetooth displays. Just connect one and start using it — no additional software installation necessary.

Snow Leopard also introduces a new feature, called braille mirroring, that enables multiple USB braille displays to be connected to one computer simultaneously. It’s perfect for classroom settings, where teachers can lead all of their students through the same lesson at the same time, even if the students are using different display models.

World-class web browsing.

VoiceOver in Snow Leopard offers new capabilities that make web browsing easier, faster, and more enjoyable. VoiceOver has been updated to take full advantage of powerful multicore processors, so it can scan and analyze large, complex web pages quickly and allow you to enter commands right away.

VoiceOver will begin reading an entire web page automatically after it loads, and you can use key commands or gestures to control VoiceOver as it’s talking. To help you more quickly size up web pages you haven’t visited before, VoiceOver can provide a customizable web page summary, including the title, number of tables, headers, links, form elements, and more.

Snow Leopard fully supports HTML web tables without the need for a forms or table mode. You navigate tables using the same commands you already know. You can hear the contents of a table, including the column title and column and row number, by dragging your finger across the trackpad or using simple keystrokes.

The rotor.

Instead of forcing you to memorize keyboard shortcuts to navigate around the screen, VoiceOver offers a unique virtual control called a rotor. When you turn it — by rotating two fingers on the trackpad as if you were turning a dial — VoiceOver moves through text based on a setting you choose. For example, after setting the rotor to “Word” or “Character,” each time you flick, VoiceOver moves through the text one word at a time or one character at a time — perfect when you’re proofreading or editing text.

You can also use the rotor to navigate web pages. When you’re on a web page, the rotor contains the names of common items, such as headers, links, tables, images, and more. You select a setting, then flick up or down to move to the previous or next occurrence of that item on the page, skipping over items in between.

Faster keyboard navigation.

A new feature called Quick Nav uses arrow key combinations to move the VoiceOver cursor so you can control the computer using just one hand without the need for modifier keys. For example, you can move up, down, left, and right by pressing the arrow keys individually, or press the up and down arrows together to click a button or a web link. Other combinations let you adjust the rotor and move the VoiceOver cursor according to the setting. With Quick Nav, you’ll be navigating and reading documents and web pages in no time.

Find information fast with auto web spots.

Many web pages are filled with complex design elements or lack useful HTML tags, making them difficult to convey through a screen reader. So Apple invented new technologies to comprehend and interpret the visual design of web pages, then use the information to assign virtual tags called “auto web spots” to mark important locations on the page. If you’re on a newspaper website, for example, there might be an auto web spot for each lead story, another for a box containing weather or sports scores, and so on. You can jump from web spot to web spot with a keystroke or the flick of a finger. And if there’s a particular feature on a site you visit often, you can assign a “sweet spot” on that page so that VoiceOver will go there first when the page opens.

Create custom labels.

Sometimes items in applications are not well labeled, so VoiceOver can describe them only with vague terms like “blank,” “empty,” or “button.” If you know what the item is or have sighted assistance, you can assign a custom label. The next time you visit the item, VoiceOver will describe it using your label. You can add as many labels as you like and export your labels to a file that can be shared with other VoiceOver users.

More customization options.

Now you have even more ways to customize VoiceOver. You can change the way VoiceOver speaks punctuation, identifies changes in text attributes, announces links, and more. Choose one of three standard verbosity levels — high, medium, and low — or customize them by adjusting 30 separate settings. You can also change the order in which descriptions are spoken and how much description you hear.

Snow Leopard also introduces VoiceOver Commanders, a new category in VoiceOver Utility that lets you assign keys and gestures to open an application, utility, or file; run an AppleScript or Automator workflow; or perform a VoiceOver command. Commanders can help those with physical and learning disabilities by simplifying complex multikey shortcuts and making commands easier to reach and enter. Choose the Numpad Commander, Keyboard Commander, or Trackpad Commander and begin customizing VoiceOver to suit the way you work.

All-new VoiceOver Quick Start tutorial.

Every Mac includes a built-in VoiceOver tutorial called Quick Start. It’s the fastest way to learn VoiceOver. Your Mac starts talking soon after you turn it on and teaches you how to begin the Quick Start tutorial. If someone sets up your computer for you, you’ll get an invitation to open Quick Start the first time you activate VoiceOver. Quick Start teaches you the keys on the keyboard, basic VoiceOver commands, and gestures, and it provides an environment where you can learn at your own pace and practice your skills. It’s localized in 18 languages, including nine new ones, so when you add voices to your Mac (sold separately), you can hear Quick Start in your native language.

Out-of-the-box support for Microsoft Exchange.

Every day is “bring your Mac to work” day.

The Mac already works brilliantly in managed corporate environments, even in companies that support mixed platforms. It can run Microsoft Office and Windows applications. It can connect to virtually any server and share files with virtually any computer. It can authenticate to Active Directory servers.

Now with Snow Leopard, the Mac has out-of-the-box support for Microsoft Exchange Server 2007, something even Windows PCs don't have. Instead of using Outlook to access Exchange services such as email, calendar invitations, and Global Address Lists, you’ll use Mail, iCal, and Address Book. Because they’re on the Mac, you can continue taking advantage of all the powerful Mac features you love, including Spotlight, Quick Look, data detectors, and more. And finally you can view your Exchange-based work life right alongside your personal mail, calendars, and contacts.

Setup that makes sense.

The best way to set up Mail, iCal, and Address Book to access your Exchange account is with the Exchange Autodiscovery feature. If this feature is enabled by your IT department, you just open the Accounts pane in Mail, enter your Exchange user name and password, and check the box to automatically set up your other applications. Mail will use Autodiscovery to grab all the pertinent information from the server and configure your settings, so you can start using your applications right away. Mac OS X also supports manual configuration of your Exchange server settings and remote setup and access of Exchange through most VPN connections.

All your email, all in one place.

You’ll access and manage your Exchange email alongside your personal email using the Mail application in Mac OS X. When you compose messages, Mail can autocomplete names from the Global Address List. You can create notes and to-do items and receive and act on event invitations in email. And use the other great features of Mail. Search across all your accounts at once using Spotlight. Create Smart Folders that gather mail messages from any or all accounts based on custom search criteria, such as all messages from your boss or all messages with the words “To Do” in the subject. Use Quick Look to view large previews of attachments without opening the files. Take advantage of data detectors, which pick out important bits of information in email messages — such as dates, phone numbers, and addresses — so you can act on them with one click.

A versatile, powerful desktop calendar.

iCal on your Mac offers all the Exchange-based features you expect, including the ability to view real-time availability of coworkers and conference rooms in the Global Address List and autocomplete their names when you invite them to meetings. You can receive and act on meeting invitations in email, and you can send invitations to people outside your organization using email; they’ll receive an .ics attachment that, when opened, will add the appointment to their iCal calendar. iCal also lets you create and manage as many separate calendars as you need — one or more Exchange-based calendars for work, a separate calendar for your family, another for birthdays, and so on. You can view them all at once in a single window or choose to see only the calendars you want. You can even choose to delegate your calendar to a colleague.

Your contacts and address lists together.

Address Book in Mac OS X gives you a flexible and convenient place to store contact information for your family, friends, and colleagues. Now, with Exchange support, it also taps into your company’s Global Address Lists. So you can create groups and Smart Groups with contacts from your local list or an Exchange-based list. You can click an address to open Google Maps or click a URL to open a web browser. And because Address Book information is fully integrated with other Mac OS X applications, Mail and iCal use your contact information to autocomplete names when you’re sending email or invitations.

Mac OS X. It's what makes a Mac a Mac.

Power of UNIX. Simplicity of the Mac.

Mac OS X is both easy to use and incredibly powerful. Everything — from the desktop you see when you start up your Mac to the applications you use every day — is designed with simplicity and elegance in mind. So whether you’re browsing the web, checking your email, or video chatting with a friend on another continent, getting things done is at once easy to learn, simple to perform, and fun to do. Of course, making amazing things simple takes seriously advanced technologies, and Mac OS X is loaded with them. Not only is it built on a rock-solid, time-tested UNIX foundation that provides unparalleled stability, it also delivers incredible performance, stunning graphics, and industry-leading support for Internet standards.

Perfect integration of hardware and software.

Elegant interface and stunning graphics.

Highly secure by design.

Built for compatibility.

Innovation for everyone.

Reliable to the core.

Fully featured, fully loaded.

Dock + Finder.

The Dock in Mac OS X provides fast, one-click access to frequently used applications, folders, files, and even downloads from the Internet. The Finder makes working with your files and documents as easy as browsing your iTunes library.

What is the Dock?

The Dock at the bottom of the screen gives you quick access to your most frequently used applications, files, and folders. With its visually appealing, high-resolution icons, the Dock practically begs to be clicked. When you do, your applications spring to life instantly, and a bright signal tells you which applications are open. You can also use Exposé from the Dock to instantly see all the open windows for an application.

You can set the Dock to remain at the bottom of the screen, framing your desktop picture and always visible. Or you can set it to tuck itself away, ready to return when you move the pointer to the bottom of the screen.

What’s in your Dock.

The Dock comes loaded with icons for many of the applications included with your Mac — Dashboard, Mail, iCal, iPhoto, and many more. But as you’d expect, it’s easy to customize. To add a new application or folder, just grab it from the Finder and move it onto the Dock. The Dock expands to make room for the new item, and if you have a lot of items, the icons automatically scale to fit on your desktop. To make them easy to identify, the icons can magnify as you move your mouse over them. Removing and rearranging items is simple: Click and drag.

Stacks for your stuff.

A stack is a Dock item that gives you fast, direct access to folders and 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). Mac OS X starts you off with premade stacks for downloads, applications, and documents. The Downloads stack automatically captures files you download from Safari, Mail, and iChat. The Applications stack gives you fast access to all your applications. And the Documents stack is a great place to keep things like presentations, spreadsheets, and word processing files. The files in each stack can appear as large icons that preview their contents, so it’s easy to find the right one before you click.

Stacks are scrollable, so you can easily view all items, and you can navigate through folders in a stack to see all the files inside the stack. Create as many stacks as you wish simply by dragging folders to the right side of your Dock.

All-new: Exposé in the Dock.

With Exposé now integrated into the Dock, you can view the open windows of a particular application with a click. Just click and hold any application icon in the Dock, and Exposé tiles the open windows of that application while causing the windows of other applications to fade away. The clutter cleared, you can easily find the document you need. A click makes it the active window, and pressing the Space bar gives you a full-screen preview of the window. That’s not all you can do with Exposé in the Dock. When you drag a file onto a Dock icon, all the application’s open windows pop up, so you can place the file in the right window — perfect if you want to attach a document to an email message.

Introducing the Finder.

The Finder is like home base for your Mac. Represented by the blue icon with the smiling face, it’s one of the first things you see when you start working on your Mac. It lets you organize and access practically everything on your Mac, including applications, files, folders, discs, and shared drives on your network. You can also see rich, high-quality previews of the contents of your files. The Finder takes full advantage of the advanced technologies in Mac OS X — such as 64-bit support and Grand Central Dispatch — so it responds more quickly to your actions.

Meet the sidebar.

The sidebar in the Finder window is your starting point when browsing your Mac. If you’ve used iTunes, you’ll feel right at home. Like iTunes, the sidebar is organized into categories to make it easy to locate your stuff — frequently accessed folders, CDs and DVDs, computers on your local network, and so on. With a few clicks, you’re on your way to finding what you need. The sidebar also features a handy Search For section. It uses Spotlight search to let you quickly find files you’ve modified today, yesterday, or in the past week, or find all images, movies, or documents. Just click one of the folders and you’ll see an up-to-the-minute list of files. And just like the Dock, you can customize the sidebar with your own search folders.

Instant networking.

Any Mac or PC on your home network automatically appears in the sidebar, allowing you to easily share files between them and even use Spotlight search and Cover Flow to search the other computers. And when you click a connected Mac, you can use screen sharing, which lets you see and control another Mac as if you were sitting in front of it — useful, for example, when you want to show someone how to use an application or feature.

See your files in Cover Flow.

Mac OS X helps you navigate everything on your Mac visually with an innovation called Cover Flow. Using Cover Flow, you can flip through your documents as easily as you flip through music in iTunes or bookmarks in Safari 4. Each file is displayed as a large preview of its first page, so you can actually see the contents of a document before opening it.

Three more ways to view.

You can also see your files in list view, which lets you easily sort them in different ways, including by file name, date modified, or file type. You can see them in column view, which lets you navigate through multiple folders quickly. And you can see them as large icons, up to 512 by 512 pixels in size. Icon view lets you thumb through a multipage document or watch a QuickTime movie right in the Finder, an easy way to find and view your stuff.

Expose.

Instantly view all open windows in stunning style with a single keystroke. Exposé unshuffles overlapping windows on your desktop into an organized thumbnail view, so you can quickly locate and switch to any window or get to any file on the desktop.

From chaos to order.

If you like to work with many applications and documents at the same time, you probably spend time each day poking through your open windows just to uncover the one you need at the moment. Wouldn’t it be great if all you had to do was press one key to snap all of that window chaos into order?

That’s exactly what Exposé does. With one keystroke, Exposé instantly tiles all your open windows, scales them down, and neatly arranges them in a grid, so you can see what’s in every single one. And you definitely can see every one, because Exposé preserves the visual quality of the window in its reduced size. To see a full-screen preview, just press the Space bar.

That’s not all. Move from one tiled window to the next and you’ll see its title displayed at the bottom of the window. When you find the window you need, just click it. Magically, every window returns to full size, and the window you clicked — whether it’s a folder, a PDF, a QuickTime movie, or a Word document — becomes the active window.

Return to your desktop.

There’s one more feature in Exposé. Press one key to push all the windows aside, giving you instant access to your desktop. Once you grab what you need, another keypress brings all the windows back. Want to open a document? Check to see if the CD or DVD you’re burning in the background is ready? Or quickly locate and drag a file into an email as an enclosure? Exposé makes it easy.

All-new: Exposé in the Dock.

Exposé not only tiles all your open windows, it also lets you view the open windows of a particular application. For example, say you’re a Keynote maestro and often have up to a dozen documents open at the same time. Exposé makes finding the one you need incredibly easy. Just click and hold the Keynote icon in the Dock, and Exposé tiles your Keynote windows while causing the windows of other applications to fade away. The clutter cleared, you can easily find the document you need. A click makes it the active window, and pressing the Space bar gives you a full-screen preview of the window. Prefer keyboard shortcuts? You can tile application windows with a keystroke, too.

And that’s not all you can do with Exposé in the Dock. When you drag a file onto a Dock icon, all the application’s open windows pop up, so you can place the file in the right window — perfect if you want to attach a document to an email message.

QuickLook.

Instantly preview the contents of your documents without ever opening them. Flip through multipage PDFs and Microsoft Office documents, watch full-screen video, view photo slideshows, and more. With a single click.

Opening files is so last year.

Quick Look is the innovative technology that gives you a sneak peek of entire files — even multiple-page documents and video — without opening them. All you have to do is select a file in the Finder and press the Space bar. An elegant transparent window appears, showing you the contents of the file instantly. It’s great when you’re looking for something specific but don’t have time to open lots of files to find it.

See everything.

Quick Look works with nearly every file on your system, including images, text files, PDF documents, movies, Keynote presentations, Mail attachments, and Microsoft Word, Excel, and PowerPoint files. To see a file in Quick Look, you simply tap the Space bar or click the Quick Look icon in the Finder window. You can view the file in full screen, and you can open the application that created it with a double-click. Best of all, Quick Look works even if you don’t have the application that created it — perfect when a colleague sends you a document that you couldn’t otherwise open.

A Quick Look back in time.

You can use Quick Look to your advantage when you’re searching for files to restore in Time Machine. Once you locate the file you’re looking for, use Quick Look to verify its contents before restoring it to the desktop.

View attachments, no detachment.

Quick Look also works in the Mail and iChat applications in Mac OS X. Say you receive a message with a bunch of attachments. Instead of downloading and opening each one, you can use Quick Look to see them with a click. It’s great for viewing PDFs, Microsoft Office documents, and other files. You can even view attached photos as a slideshow and add them to your iPhoto library with ease.

Spotlight.

With Spotlight, you can find anything on your computer as quickly as you type: files, email, contacts, images, calendar events, and applications. And because it’s built into the core of Mac OS X, search results update instantly whenever files change.

Stop looking, start finding.

Spotlight is the lightning-fast search technology built into Mac OS X that makes it easy to find what you’re looking for, even if you don’t know where to look. Conveniently available in the Mac OS X menu bar, the Spotlight search field gives you instant results as you start typing, encompassing not only files, folders, and documents but also messages in Mail, contacts in Address Book, iCal calendars, items in System Preferences, applications, and even dictionary definitions. Spotlight searches aren’t confined to your computer — you can also search other computers on the network.

The need for speed.

Built into the core of Mac OS X, Spotlight delivers results so quickly because it indexes files on your computer in the background, so you never experience lag times or slowdowns. And when you make a change, such as adding a new file, email, or contact, Spotlight updates its index automatically, so search results are always up-to-the-moment accurate.

Searching with smarts.

When you search with Spotlight, you’re actually accessing a comprehensive, constantly updated index that sees all the metadata inside supported files — the “what, when, and who” of every piece of information saved on your Mac — including the kind of content, the author, edit history, format, size, and many more details. Most document types, including Microsoft Word documents, Adobe Photoshop images, and email, already contain rich metadata. And because Spotlight indexes content as well, your search results include what appears inside a file or document, not just its title. When you click the document, you are immediately taken to that spot in the document with the search terms highlighted.

Smartly organized.

Thanks to the speed and flexibility of Spotlight, you’ll discover countless new ways to organize your files. You can save the results of a search as a Smart Folder that automatically updates as you add, change, or remove documents on your Mac. Smart Folders contain files grouped together based on search criteria instead of physical location, so the same file can appear in multiple Smart Folders without moving from its original saved location on your system. No need to duplicate, shift, or update files: Spotlight Smart Folders keep everything organized for you.

It’s in the Mail. (And more.)

In addition to the Finder, Spotlight search technology is built into other applications in Mac OS X: Mail, Address Book, iCal, System Preferences, Preview, even Safari. No matter which application you search, results appear immediately after you start typing a few letters. And your search is customizable. In Mail, for example, you can search in selected mailboxes or across all of them, and in individual fields (To, From, Subject) or entire messages. In Address Book, you can search the entire list or individual groups.

Safari 4.

Experience the web with the fast, easy-to-use web browser. With its simple, elegant interface and support for the latest Internet standards, Safari gets out of your way and lets you enjoy the web.

Surf fast.

Safari 4 in Snow Leopard outraces all other browsers. On even the most demanding Web 2.0 applications, Safari delivers blazingly fast performance using the new Nitro Engine. For example, thanks to 64-bit technology in Snow Leopard, JavaScript performance in Safari 4 is up to 50 percent faster than the 32-bit version of Safari. In addition, Safari offers top-flight HTML performance — the best on any platform — loading pages up to 3 times faster than Internet Explorer 8 and almost 3 times faster than Firefox 3.5. What does all that mean for you? Less time loading pages and more time enjoying them.

Distraction-free browsing.

Safari sports a clean, elegant look that keeps your focus where it belongs: on the content of the web page. The features you use most are just a click away, and an integrated Google search bar makes it easy to find what you’re looking for.

Crash resistant.

Safari 4 in Snow Leopard is even more resistant to crashes. It turns out that the number one cause of crashes in Mac OS X is browser plug-ins. So Apple engineers redesigned Safari to make plug-ins run separately from the browser. If a plug-in crashes on a web page, Safari keeps running. Just refresh the page and get going again.

Flip through history.

Safari 4 offers a dramatic way to revisit your browsing history. Just type a word or phrase in the History Search field in Top Sites, and Safari quickly presents you with full-page previews of the websites that look exactly as they did when you last visited them. You flip through them just like in Cover Flow in iTunes or the Finder, then click to access the page you want.

See your Top Sites.

The new Top Sites feature lets you enjoy a stunning, at-a-glance preview of your favorite websites without lifting a finger. Safari 4 tracks the sites you browse and ranks your favorites, presenting up to 24 thumbnails on a single page and making them accessible with just a click. You can customize the display by pinning a favorite site to a specific location in the grid. And a star in the upper right of each thumbnail indicates whether a site has new content since the last time you visited.

Surf securely.

With support for the latest standards for secure access and information sharing on the web, Safari protects you whether you’re browsing the Internet at home or on a public computer. Safari offers built-in antiphishing technology that detects fraudulent websites and warns you before displaying the information. It also supports EV (Extended Validation) Certificates, so you can feel confident shopping, updating account information, or paying bills online.

Kid-proof the Internet.

Start your kids’ web exploration off on the right foot with Safari parental controls. Using the same technology that keeps your inbox free of junk mail, a content filter in Mac OS X takes a quick peek at websites before they load and tries to determine if they’re suitable for kids. If they’re not, Mac OS X blocks them from view. You can override this filter by creating lists of specific websites you want — or don’t want — your children to see.

Mail, iCal, Address Book.

Three built-in applications that work as one: Mail, iCal, and Address Book bring the power of Mac OS X to your email, calendar, and contacts. You get elegant, easy-to-use interfaces, lightning-fast searches, and complete integration across the applications and your Mac.

Mail: All your email accounts in one place.

Designed from the ground up specifically for email, Mail offers an elegant user interface that makes it easy to manage all your email from a single, ad-free inbox, even when you’re not connected to the Internet. It works with most email standards — including POP3 and IMAP — and most popular email services, such as Gmail, Yahoo! Mail, and AOL Mail. If you have more than one email account, no problem. Just add all your accounts to Mail and you’ll be able to access everything from one central place.

Data, detected.

Mail does more than just show email. It also analyzes the contents to help you act on them. Say you get an email inviting you to dinner at Gino’s Pizza tomorrow at 6 p.m. Mail not only recognizes that 6 p.m. is the time, it knows that “tomorrow” represents a date on a calendar. So you can add the invitation to your iCal calendar by clicking the date, whether it’s an actual date (October 18) or a relative date (tomorrow). It also knows that Gino’s is a place, so you can click the address to view a Google map of the restaurant’s location. And if the message includes a phone number or email address, you can add it to Address Book with a click.

Filtering the junk.

Mail includes an intelligent mail filter that automatically catches messages it thinks are junk. Junk mail is placed in a special folder in Mail so it doesn’t clog up your inbox. If a junk message gets through, simply click the Junk button, and from then on, similar email will be placed in the Junk folder. The more you train Mail to recognize junk mail, the better it gets.

Address Book: One place for all your contacts.

Address Book gives you a flexible and convenient place to store contact information for your family, friends, and colleagues. You can import information from other applications, create distribution lists for clubs and groups, print address labels and envelopes, and more. Because Address Book is built on the industry-standard vCard format for storing contact information, your friends can send you cards that you can add to your own list by dropping them in — no typing required.

Do more with your addresses.

Address Book does more than display card contents; it also lets you use them. Click an address to ask the web for a Google map showing the location. Click a URL to open the website. Click an email address to instantly send a message or start an iChat conversation.

iCal: A powerful desktop calendar.

iCal makes it easy to keep track of your busy schedule. You can create as many separate calendars as you need — one for home, another for school, a third for work, and so on. You can see all your calendars in a single window or choose to see only the calendars you want.

RSVP you.

With iCal, you can invite friends and family to events. iCal lets you create invitations using contact information from your Address Book, update your guest list, keep track of attendee responses, and receive the latest status information. A centralized notification box keeps all your invitations and responses in one easy-to-access location so you can manage events in iCal instead of your busy email inbox. And when you or another Mac user receives an iCal invitation in Mail, it’s automatically added to iCal.

Find what you need.

Thanks to Spotlight, it’s easy to find information in Mail, iCal, and Address Book. Within the applications, a search sorts through everything — all fields in an email, all information on a card or appointment — so you find every possible match. If you’re not using the applications, you can still find messages, contacts, and appointments by using Spotlight search in the menu bar. Start typing a search term and Spotlight returns the related items immediately.

Smart Groups and Smart Mailboxes.

Spotlight technology helps you organize your mail and contacts in another big way: Smart Groups and Smart Mailboxes. You simply select the relevant criteria — say, every contact with a birthday in the next 30 days or every email sent by your boss — and your applications create a folder containing every item that meets your criteria. Best of all, the folders stay updated as new items are created. Smart Groups in Address Book appear in your Group list, and Smart Mailboxes in Mail appear just below your inboxes.

Fully integrated.

Because they’re Mac OS X applications, Mail, iCal, and Address Book are fully integrated with each other and with other features of your Mac. For example, Mail and iCal use the contacts in your Address Book, so you can quickly send messages or invitations to individuals and groups. Mail can access your iPhoto library, so it’s easy to email pictures to your friends and family. If you receive an attachment, Mail lets you use Quick Look to view its contents without saving the attachment and opening another application.

Syncing included.

Part of what makes Address Book and iCal so powerful is seamless syncing. They can sync the contact and calendar information on your Mac with your iPhone or other mobile phone, PDA, or iPod touch, so it follows you everywhere. And with a MobileMe account, your contacts and calendars stay up to date wirelessly across multiple Mac computers, iPhone, iPod touch, and the web, so you can access your information from any device with an Internet connection.

iChat.

Included with Mac OS X, iChat is a rich instant messaging application that works with your AIM or MobileMe account and makes it easy to stay in touch with friends and family using text and video, whether they’re on a Mac or a PC.

IM me.

A powerful instant text messaging application, iChat comes with Mac OS X and is loaded with great features that make sending messages to your AIM or MobileMe buddies fast and easy. Simple text chats feel like natural conversations, with icons and thought bubbles that make it easy to see who’s saying what. And you can transmit any kind of file — from a web address to a photo — by simply dragging it into your chat. Pictures display right in the message window, web links open in a browser with a click. In short, iChat is the best way to IM.

Don’t just type it — say it face to face.

Most Mac computers include a built-in iSight camera and mic. When you use them with iChat, you get the easiest way to have high-quality video and audio chats with your friends and family. You can chat with just one other person or make it a party by starting a multiway chat. Featuring a three-dimensional view, iChat practically puts everybody in the room with you. View their faces reflected into space, just as if they were sitting around a conference room table. And with video backdrops built into iChat, you can make it look like you’re chatting from the Eiffel Tower, under the sea, or your own custom backdrop.

Click to begin.

With its intuitive interface, iChat shows you when your buddies are available for a chat. Bright icons indicate their online status and whether they’re capable of a video chat or just audio. To start a chat, click the camera or phone icon to send an invitation. To add more people, click the icons for the meeting attendees on your buddy list and each colleague steps into your virtual office.

Show off slideshows from anywhere.

Why wait for a darkened room and a projector to present vacation photos or Keynote slides? Now you can do it all remotely, right in iChat. Put on a photo slideshow, click through a Keynote presentation, or play a movie — in full screen, accompanied by a video feed of you hosting — while your buddy looks on.

Share and share alike.

Thanks to iChat screen sharing, you and your buddy can observe and control a single desktop, so you can easily 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. iChat initiates an audio chat when you start a screen sharing session, so you can talk things through while you’re at it.

Child’s play.

With iChat at home, you can enforce your “no talking to strangers” rule using parental controls that allow you to decide who your children can chat with online. Approve the buddies you trust and iChat blocks all attempts to send and receive IMs with anyone else. iChat also automatically hides or displays online status so that only buddies approved by you can see if your kids are online.

iTunes.

iTunes plays all your digital music and video. It syncs content to your iPod, iPhone, and Apple TV. And it’s an entertainment superstore that stays open 24/7.

Entertainment made easy.

Forget rifling through stacks of CDs or flipping through channels. iTunes puts your entire music and video collection a mere click away, giving you an all-access pass to thousands of hours of digital entertainment. Browse. Organize. Play. All from your Mac or PC.

The world’s #1 online music store — and more.

iTunes is an application that plays all your digital music, podcasts, and videos. It syncs content to your iPod, iPhone, and Apple TV. And it’s a 24/7 entertainment superstore that lets you browse and buy over 10 million songs, rent or buy blockbuster movies, get HD episodes of your favorite TV shows, download applications for your iPhone or iPod touch, subscribe to free podcasts, and shop for audiobooks.

Everything, to go.

You have music and video in iTunes. You have photos, contacts, and calendars on your computer. You want to get it all on your iPod or iPhone. iTunes syncing does exactly that. And wireless syncing to Apple TV puts music and video from your iTunes library on the big screen.

QuickTime.

Watch pristine-quality video in a clean, uncluttered window. Record and trim your own movies. And easily share them over the web.

A beautiful new player.

Completely redesigned in Mac OS X Snow Leopard, QuickTime X debuts a brand-new version of QuickTime Player, the application used by millions to watch a wide range of video formats and files. Using the power of the Core Animation technology in Mac OS X, QuickTime Player offers a clean, uncluttered interface with controls that fade out when they’re not needed. And large thumbnail images make navigating chaptered movies simpler than before. Instead of text-only chapter names, QuickTime Player displays frame-based thumbnail images for each chapter marker, so it’s easy to navigate your chaptered media.

Trim your media.

The new QuickTime Player lets you trim your media to the ideal length by removing unwanted portions from the beginning or end. Rather than relying on a simple timeline, it displays frame-based thumbnails that help you make the perfect edit.

Share with iTunes and the web.

QuickTime Player converts your personal media files for use by iTunes and your iPhone, iPod, or Apple TV, using the optimal settings for each destination. After conversion, QuickTime Player automatically delivers the content to your iTunes library. You can also use QuickTime Player to publish your media to MobileMe* or YouTube without worrying about formats or resolutions.

Record with a click.

QuickTime Player makes it easy to capture live audio and video directly from your built-in iSight camera, FireWire camcorder, or microphone. Just click the Record button in QuickTime Player and start capturing your audio or video to disk. You can also catch the action on your screen with screen recording — perfect for creating instructional media or when you want to show a friend how to do something.

Built for high quality and smooth playback.

QuickTime X is optimized for the latest media formats — such as H.264 and AAC — through a new media architecture that delivers stutter-free playback of high-definition content on nearly all Snow Leopard-based Mac systems. QuickTime X maximizes the efficiency of modern media playback by using the graphics processor to scale and display video. It further increases efficiency by supporting GPU-accelerated video decoding of H.264 files. And QuickTime X takes advantage of the proven capabilities of ColorSync to color-manage your media for the best playback experience and for sharing to your iPhone, iPod, or Apple TV.

Photo Booth.

Take fun photo snapshots and video clips with your built-in iSight camera using Photo Booth. Send them to your friends, use one as an iChat icon, add them to your Address Book, or organize and edit them in iPhoto.

Your personal photographer.

Photo Booth is a fun application that makes it easy to take photos using the built-in iSight camera in your Mac. Just look into the lens, smile, and click. Before it snaps your photo, Photo Booth flashes your display with bright white to add more light to your face. Take a single snapshot or use the burst mode to take four quick pictures.

The fun begins.

Sure, you can take regular photos, but the real fun starts when you use the cool effects and backdrops in Photo Booth. Snap a photo of yourself at the Eiffel Tower or in outer space. Twist and twirl your smile with the strange Twirl effect. Add an artistic look with the Colored Pencil effect. Experiment with all the effects to transform your look.

Capture video clips.

Photo Booth is not just for pictures. Using your iSight camera, you can shoot video clips and send them to friends and family via email with just a few clicks. Backdrops and effects work for your videos, too.

Time Machine.

Never again worry about losing your digital files. Time Machine automatically saves up-to-date copies of everything on your Mac — photos, music, videos, documents, applications, and settings. If you ever have the need, you can easily go back in time to recover anything.

Set it, then forget it.

Time Machine works with your Mac and an external hard drive. Just connect the drive and assign it to Time Machine and you’re a step closer to enjoying peace of mind. Time Machine will automatically back up your entire Mac, including system files, applications, accounts, preferences, music, photos, movies, and documents. But what makes Time Machine different from other backup applications is that it 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.

Every change, every hour.

Following the initial backup of your entire Mac, Time Machine automatically makes incremental backups every hour, every day, copying just the files that have changed since your last backup. And it does this all in the background, so you can continue working while Time Machine is busy copying your files. 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.

Go back in time.

Say you accidentally deleted a file you meant to save. Simply enter the Time Machine browser and you’ll see exactly how your computer looked on the dates you’re browsing. You can browse for files using Cover Flow, or you can perform a Spotlight search to find what you need across all your backups. Use the timeline to select a specific date, or let Time Machine fly through time to find your most recent changes. Before recovering a file, use Quick Look to verify the contents of the file, then click Restore to bring it back to the present.

Ready when you are.

When your mobile Mac is connected to your backup drive, Time Machine works as you’d expect. When it isn’t connected, Time Machine also works as you’d expect. It keeps track of which files have changed since the last backup and backs them up to your backup drive the next time you connect. On any Mac, if Time Machine is unable to perform a backup, that’s duly noted in its preference pane.

Migration with style.

If you’re setting up a new Mac with files from an old Mac, Time Machine can help simplify the process. Just use Migration Assistant to copy portions of any Time Machine backup to a new Mac, or select “Restore System from Time Machine” in the Utilities menu on your Mac OS X install disc. Choose any date recorded in Time Machine to set up your new Mac exactly as your previous Mac was on that date.