Apparently Psystar has until the final second of this year, midnight on December 31, to cease all of these activities:

• Copying, selling, offering to sell, distributing or creating derivative works of Mac OS X without authorization from Apple.
• Intentionally inducing, aiding, assisting, abetting or encouraging any other person or entity to infringe Apple's copyrighted Mac OS X software.
• Circumventing any technological measure that effectively controls access Mac OS X, including, but not limited to, the technological measure used by Apple to prevent unauthorized copying of Mac OS X on non-Apple computers.
• Playing any part in a product intended to circumvent Apple's methods for controlling Mac OS X, such as the methods used to prevent unauthorized copying of Mac OS X on non-Apple computers.
• Doing anything to circumvent the rights held by Apple under the Copyright Act with respect to Mac OS X.

It's noted that those rules laid down by judge William Alsup may not apply to "Psystar's Rebel EFI software, a $50 application that allows certain Intel-powered PCs to run Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard," so this may not be the last we hear of the company. For now though, we can enjoy a few moments of quiet after this legal knockout. [Apple Insider]

First, and most obvious, is because it makes for a bizarre juxtaposition between the ancient OS 9 (or OS 8, or Systems 6 and 7) and Twitter, and self-consciously modern online service that would've seemed ridiculous in the age of the Bondi Blue iMac. And second, because the tiny slice of the population who still earnestly uses OS 9 is either clinically paranoid, hasn't read a software review since the year 2000, or is stuck with a 10-year-old desktop by some truly bizarre or unfortunate circumstance, all of which would make for some top-rate tweeting.

See you on Tweetmeme, @ClintonLied_Y2K, and @Ivebeenlockedinthebasementagainstmywillsinceiwas4! [Retards.org via Gartenberg's Twitter]

The word virtualization conjures images of the dank nerd lairs, populated by lonely network admins, scattered with miles of gray wire, grimy PC towers, processed food packaging and tiny tumbleweeds woven from human hair. It sounds like the domain of the software nerd, the Gentoo jockey, and most importantly, not you. Today, though, virtualization has become mainstream: modern software makes running virtualized operating systems amazingly easy, and undeniably useful.

Intimidating erminology aside, here's what desktop virtualization means today: You can run just about any OS, Mac OS X excluded, inside any other OS. Ubuntu in Mac OS? Sure. Windows 7 within Windows XP? Why not? Windows ME within Snow Leopard? Nobody's going to stop you, I guess! And these aren't patchy, half-assed experiments we're talking about here—these are fully-functioning installations that'll connect to USB peripherals, access the internet, share files with your host OS, and run almost any software, short of 3D games. You can set up as many of these things as you want, and delete them in a matter of seconds. It's pretty great, is what I'm trying to say.

Best of all, virtualization is now something you can try—and stick with—for free, thanks to software like Sun's VirtualBox. It's a free download on any platform, and it does its job spectacularly. Here's how to get started.

What You'll Need

Free hard drive space: VirtualBox is going to create a simulated hard drive (a hard drive image, to be specific) inside your current OS's file system. In other words, you'll need to have space handy to hold a standard OS install, plus whatever apps you're planning on using on the host system. 10GB is enough to play around with in most cases.

Lots-o-RAM: As efficient as modern virtualization is, running one OS inside another isn't going to be easy on your hardware. The easiest way to ensure good VM performance is to have plenty of RAM, such that both OSes—your host and your guest—can have more than their minimum recommended amount of RAM.

VirtualBox: This is the virtual machine software, or the program in which all of your virtual OSes will run. You may've heard of clients like VMWare or Parallels, but these are either paid or have limited platform support. VirtualBox is a free, cross-platform alternative. Getting it is just a matter of downloading the correct version—there are Windows, Mac and Linux editions—and running an installation wizard.

A guest OS: Installing an OS as a virtual machine is almost exactly like installing an OS natively, albeit slightly easier. In other words, you'll need a full, licensed version of your OS, in whatever form you can get it. Downloaded ISO images will work right out of the box—this is how most Linux distributions will come packaged—while OSes on a CD will work too, including your Windows install discs. If applicable, you'll still need to enter license keys—as far as Microsoft is concerned, this is a fresh installation of an OS.

Installing Your Virtual Machine

I've chosen to install Windows 7 within OS X Snow Leopard for this guide, because this will be a common usage scenario, and because the processing of installing an OS in VirtualBox is nearly the same no matter what host/guest combo you're. If you're installing Ubuntu 9.04 within Windows XP, for example, you can still follow along. Anyway, here you go:

Installing Guest Additions

VirtualBox supports so-called "Guest Additions" in some OSes, which are essentially sets of tools and drivers that make the virtualization more seamless. If they're available, you'll want to install them: the guest OS will adjust to your screen resolution properly, your video performance will be smoother (and in Windows XP and Vista, possibly accelerated), filesharing will be simplified, copy and paste will work between OSes, and in some cases, you'll even be able to run individual programs as native windows in your host OS

That's called "Seamless Mode," and if you're running Windows inside Mac OS or Linux, you may as well try it out. It's not quite perfect—the Start Menu stacked atop the Dock is a little awkward—but this way you don't have to switch between entire desktops just to switch from one app to another. It's a cool effect, at the very least.

To install Guest Additions, click "Install Guest Additions" under the "Machine" menu while running your virtual machine. Guest Additions should appear in your guest OS as an optical disc, which should contain an installer. Run it, then restart your virtual machine. Once Guest Additions are installed, you can access Seamless Mode from the VirtualBox menu, under "Machine."

Shared Directories

Copy and paste will often work between the host and guest OS, but if you're planning on using your guest OS for productivity or downloading any kind of media, a shared folder is the only real solution. In the bottom right corner of a running virtual machine, you should see a small folder icon. Clicking it will bring up a shared folder creation dialog. Select where on your host OS your shared folder should be—it can be an existing directory, like your "Music" folder—and check the box to make it "Permanent." On your guest machine, the shared folder will show up as a VirtualBox shared directory in your local network.

(Note: I'm getting reports that some people running Windows 7 guest machines have trouble finding the network share. You may have to map a network drive manually—just right-click "Computer" anywhere in Windows—the Start Menu works fine—and select "Map Network Drive." Choose whatever drive letter you'd like to give your directory, then enter "\\vboxsvr\myshare" as the folder path, where "myshare" is the name you've given your shared folder in virtualbox.)

Connecting USB Devices

One of the most common reasons for installing a virtual machine is to circumvent some kind of driver incompatibility. VirtualBox recognized most of your computer's inbuilt components, like sound cards, extra storage or webcams, and can use them automatically. For most USB devices, though, you'll need to tell it when to take control.

In most cases, this just means making sure your device isn't in use by your host OS (a flash drive will need to be unmounted, for example), and clicking the small USB plug icon in the bottom right corner of the screen. This will bring up a list of available connected devices; simply click the one you want, and you're good to go.

Odds and Ends

Virtualizing isn't just a good way to get around some kind of nagging compatibility problem, it's a fun way to wile away a few hours experimenting with weird new OSes. Setup is just about the same no matter what you're installing, so there's really no reason not to try some of the more esoteric software out there—anything with an ISO available for download will do. For a taste, try the Haiku Project—a revival of the long-dead BeOS, or see what the hell FreeBSD is.

If you have more tips and tools to share, please drop some links in the comments-your feedback is hugely important to our Saturday How To guides. And if you have any topics you'd like to see covered here, please let me know. Happy virtualizing, folks.

From afar, the scene is a little more grim (click for larger version):

And seeing it up close makes me wish for a full-length menu bar:
Still though, if you need to indulge your fanboyism, please, do it like this. —Thanks, Tristan!

As a result of the individual motions by both companies, two hearings have been set for November 12 to determine whether there'll be a January trial. I'm not-so-secretly hoping that Judge William Alsup will look at the "user license agreements for both Mac OS X 10.5 and Mac OS X 10.6," arguments about Digital Millennium Copyright Act, and the whole disc protection circumvention mess and make Apple and Psystar duke it out in court. Hell, I'll volunteer to transcribe the case for everyone's entertainment, stupid argument by stupid argument. Just make it happen. [AppleInsider via Crunch Gear]

Robin Harris, who has worked in the data storage field for as long as I've been alive, is discussing the mysterious absence of ZFS in Mac OS 10.6 over at his blog StorageMojo. He reconsiders his original stance, that there were migration or integration timeline issues, in favor of it being a battle between licensing preferences.

Harris speculates that Sun Microsystems, the folks behind ZFS, may have pushed for a Common Development and Distribution License (CDDL) and patent indemnification which turned Apple off the deal. Harris emphasizes that the incompatibility between CDDL and GPL was one of the issues for Apple, but certainly not the only one. (How could it be when there are CDDL elements such as DTrace in Snow Leopard already?)

Patent indemnification could play a larger role as the manner in which Sun might waive patent claims against Apple for the use of ZFS wouldn't actually truly protect Apple from third-party claims, but that too is speculation.

What we do know is that Apple promised us ZFS a year ago and didn't put out this month. Be it a lovers' spat with Sun, licensing issues, or a larger legal picture, we're still optimistic that we'll see ZFS down the road, particularly with the changes going on as part of Sun being taken over by Oracle.

Check out Harris' thoughts and tell us yours. Why did Apple go back on something they were so proud to announce? And when will this broken promise be made up to us? [Storage mojo]

"But here's a tip: Apple concedes that the $29 Snow Leopard upgrade will work properly on these Tiger-equipped Macs, so you can save the extra $140."

I know Apple's PR people are having a heart attack right now reading that. They don't like it when influential journalists suggest violations of the EULA. In fact, they generally label that stuff as "illegal," and I am sure many lawyers would agree that it is.

So, is this Mossberg ripping open his shirt, tying a bandana around his head and saying, "Ahoy mateys, the rules were meant to be keel-hauled!" Or is this a slip-up he's going to have to apologize for—or at least qualify with an explanation—in the morning? Is it a great tip, or is he telling every Tiger user to steal $140 out of the mouth of Steve Jobs? We'll keep an eye out for the answer. [AllThingsD]

Update: Apparently NYT's David Pogue also supports this breach of EULA (or is perhaps using a funny way to report EULA crashers to Apple?):

Don't forget to read our Snow Leopard review!!!!

[Back to our Complete Guide to Snow Leopard]

Contacts app now syncs with Google and Yahoo!: No longer a service for the iPhone and Mobile Me, the Contacts application can now talk to your Yahoo and Google address books and pull your contact info.

Exchange Support: Snow Leopard now supports Microsoft Exchange throughout the platform, meaning mail, calendars and contacts can all be synced using the secure protocol. We haven't yet had a chance to put it through the ringer ourselves, but you suit-and-tie-loving mactards can at least be excited.

Date Appears In Menu Bar: If, like me, you're too lazy to click on the calendar, hit the widget key to see the calendar, or just make use of your memory, you can now have the full date on display from the Menu Bar.

Optimized Video Chats: Previously, to video chat in 640x480 resolution in iChat, you needed 900kbps of bandwidth. With the Snow Leopard version of iChat, you only need 300kbps. Plus iChat theater also lets you carry out multiple chats in 640x480 resolution. It looks cleaner and runs smoother. We like it.

Quicktime X Youtube Upload: In addition, you can upload directly to Youtube from Quicktime X, making the video player more functional than ever.

Smart Text: Snow Leopard has a number of new text-based enhancement for apps like Text Edit, iChat and Mail including spelling auto-correct, and text substation, which lets you use shorter macros in place of longer words and phrases.

Password Login Delay: This is a legit and useful new feature of Snow Leopard—if you enabled a password protection when your computer goes to sleep, you can now choose how long your computer is idle before the password actually kicks in. Its great if you have your computer set to sleep after a few minutes of inactivity.

Google and Yahoo! Support in iCal: One nice thing about iCal is that it's now much easier to add calendars from Google and Yahoo!. No hacks or third party software necessary.

New Quicktime X UI: Snow Leopard comes complete with a new version of Quicktime that comes with a revamped UI, fullscreen mode, complete with a visual timeline and the ability to quickly edit videos, iMovie style (those last two were previously exclusive to the now defunct Quicktime Pro).

Split Terminal Consoles: Code monkeys will probably appreciate this because they can run different sessions and compare what goes on behind the scenes. For most of us, however, it matters little.

Native Gamma 2.2 Support: Snow Leopard supports Gamma 2.2 out of the box, which is preferred over Gamma 1.8 by design and graphics professionals because Adobe RGB also supports 2.2.

Better Drive Eject Protocol: If you use an external HDD with any regularity, you know ejecting the thing can be tricky—sometimes it will tell you an app is using the drive, but won't specify WHICH app is using it. Not only is ejecting more reliable, but if an app is actually using it, it will tell you which one it is.

Multitouch Gestures: Some of the pre-unibody design MacBook Pros that came along late in the game now have multitouch gestures supported—ALL of the gestures.

Trash Stashing: If you accidentally sent an item to the trash that you want to replace, it's now as easy as right clicking on the item in the garbage folder and clicking "Put Back." Problem solved.

Dock Expose: This is one of the slicker features to grace the Snow Leopard update—when you click and hold the icon of an open app on the dock all open windows associated with the app line up and arrange themselves like they would in Expose. But, you know, controlled from the Dock. Also nice is the revamped dock menu design, which looks very in tune with the iPhone's touch-friendly design.

Quicktime X video capture: With Quicktime X, you can also capture video direct from an iSight camera, firewire video camera or audio in. You can also record your screen with the push of a button.

Airport Signal Strength: Windows users have long been accustomed to this, but when you're looking for free wi-fi to steal and wanna get an idea of what's most reliable, you can now get an idea before you connect. It really took Apple this long to add this?

Improved PDF Handling In Preview: Preview improved the text selection algorithm for PDF's, so when you're trying to excerpt a pesky block of text from a dual column PDF, you can actually copy and paste it without getting a bunch of extra words.

There are four new fonts that come with Snow Leopard—Menlo, Chalkduster, Heiti and Hiragino Sans GB. But truth be told, they're no Helvetica.

Better Image Scaling: Preview now uses a process called Lanczos interpolation to resize and scale images. Judging from this image of a puking monkey that i resized from 450 to 800 wide, I'd say it works reasonably well.

Automatic Timezone Detection: If you're jetsetting around the country and/or world with regularity, Snow Leopard will detect your location using wi-fi hotspots and adjust the timezone accordingly.

Really Big Icons: When you're browsing in Finder's icon view, there's a slider that lets you scale your icons up to a massive 512x512 pixels. Why you'd want to do that, I don't know, but you can.

Thumbnail Preview: If you're viewing icons in Finder and come across a video file, a play button will appear over the thumbnail and you can preview the video without a pop-up window. You can also flip through PDFs and Office docs right from the thumbnail.

Six Extra Gigs of Space: Not like its a negative in any way (six gigs are six gigs), but if Snow Leopard freeing up six gigabytes of storage space feels necessary or exciting to you, you probably should just buy a new hard drive.

When browsing a stack in grid view and you have a bunch of crap in the folder, the window is now scrollable, simplifying the process, and basically making it look more and more like a Finder window with lipstick.

Annotate This!: Preview now has a bar at the bottom of the window full of various annotation tools, such as shapes, highlighter, memos, underline, strikeout and hyperlink. Useful for the bookworms out there who are deal with texts in digital formats.

Chinese Character Input: This isn't really a feature the majority of us will use, but rather a demo of what's possible with Apple input technology. You can use the trackpad to write Chinese characters and have them appear as computer text. Pretty neat idea.

Safari Less Prone to Plug-In Related Crashes: Apple says plug-ins were the number one reason for Safari crashes. Now they say that the Snow Leopard edition of Safari 4 won't crash when a plug-in gives out, and because of the 64-bit computing, JavaScript is 50% faster. I'm not really sure how to show that, so I'll just provide an image of a page I'm sure would have crashed a lot in the past.

Printer Updates: Snow Leopard will now automatically download drivers from the internet when you plug new printer in, and deliver driver updates over the air like any other app that makes use of Software Update. Takes some of the hassle out of having to dig up and install everything yourself.

Malware Scanning: Not so much an advertised feature of Snow Leopard, but it seems the new Apple OS has the ability to do a light scan for malware when yo attempt to open a file. Interesting.
64-Bit Computing: Snow Leopard has been designed from the start to support 64-bit computing, and if you have a Core 2 Duo (or better) processor, Apple says your computer will run faster and more secure. But the noticable advantage of 64-bit computing is that it can support more than 32-gigabytes of RAM (16 billion-gigabytes MAX) down the road.

Grand Central Dispatch: Apple's new Grand Central Dispatch technology claims to take advantage of multi-core processors by routing processes more efficiently to prevent lag and freezing. If one core gets tied up by a resource-heavy app, the other is still free for general use across the rest of the computer.

GPU-based h.264 Acceleration and Open CL Compliance: Quicktime X uses newer GPUs to accelerate h.264 videos which allows for faster, smoother playback that uses less memory and computing power. Snow Leopard is also designed to work with the Open CL standard which basically means that any developer can code OS X apps to access the discrete NVIDIA GPUs found in newer Apple Products for more than just graphics.

Rosetta Isn't Gone: Just because Snow Leopard doesn't run on PowerPC machines doesn't mean it's dropped support for legacy apps altogether. If you attempt to install a PPC-based app, Snow Leopard will prompt you to install Rosetta.

Faster Time Machine Backups: Apple says that the initial Time Machine backup in Snow Leopard is 80% faster than before, which will save you ALOT of time if you have huge chunks of data to push through.

[Back to our Complete Guide to Snow Leopard]

The install disc, which is nearly identical to the Leopard install disc that comes with new Macs, clearly states that this is Mac OS version 10.6, and version 1.0 of said OS. It seems perfectly legit to us, but we wonder how such a disc could have slipped out ahead of release. Regardless, this probably means the August 28th guess isn't far off. [Engadget Japan (translated) Engadget]

A desktop app store is fundamentally different than a mobile one, especially a closed system like the Apple's, since users are already accustomed to finding and installing their apps piecemeal. Desktop app stores are a convenience—not a necessity or a mandate—an idea which IDFusion seems to have taken onboard with App Bodega.

Ignoring the twee interface (a storefront, see!?!) App Bodega will feel familiar to anyone who's used one of the many Linux application front-ends, like Synaptic. Those same people will also tell you that those programs are incredibly useful, and make life much easier when it comes time to download a new app from an unfamiliar category.

Moving beyond the strictly free Synaptic model, Bodega will let developers sell their apps, though they won't take a cut—the entire project will be, at least for now, advertising-supported. [CNET]

You'd be forgiven for thinking Psystar had fallen off some kind of wagon a few weeks ago, when they somehow emerged from (possibly strategic) bankruptcy only to immediately release another hackintosh product, just like the ones that landed them in their predicament in the first place. Their move was bold; their post-bankruptcy statements, hilariously brash.

Now the Psystar PR team, such as they are, is back at it, and they're rallying the troops—this time, with a softer, more nuanced, but possibly still totally wrong message:

Apple's copyright on OS X doesn't give Apple the right to tell people what they can do with it after they buy a copy. Apple can't tell an applications developer that it can't make a piece of Mac-compatible software. They can't forbid Mac users from writing blogs critical of Apple. And they can't tell us not to write kernel extensions that turn the computers we buy into Mac-compatible hardware.

A new trial date has been set for January 11, 2010, in federal court in San Francisco. As we move toward trial, we'll be keeping you informed about the arguments, the evidence, and what's going on in the case. And, come January, Camara & Sibley will be ready to fight for Psystar, guns blazin'. We hope to see you there!

Camara & Sibley? That sounds suspiciously legitimate! And what happened to David and Goliath, and applesauce? It seems they're moving away from the silly rhetoric and returning to an older, more sympathetic refrain:

Everyone here values openness. And that's how we're going to fight Apple: in public. We have nothing to hide. We buy hundreds of copies of OS X legally, from retailers like Amazon and Apple itself. We're probably one of Apple's biggest customers. Then we install these copies of OS X, along with kernel extensions that we wrote in-house, on computers that we buy and build. Then we resell the package to people like you. That's it.

The court date is set for just a few months from now, when, assuming Psystar stays serious about this, we might actually get a decent show. [Psystar via OS News—Thanks, Rob!]

As John mentioned yesterday, it's an update that resembles Windows 7's amazing Taskbar, in that you can get at more windows and files from the Dock itself, currently considered more of an app launcher than an app manager. Here are the new key attributes for Exposé, and how it works within the Dock:

• Exposé itself has a new look: Windows are arranged in a grid rather than in whatever open space is available, and the title of each window appears underneath. (You can see this in the video below, if you pay attention.)

• Stacks, those folder contents that pop up from the Dock, also got tweaked. Most notably, you can scroll to see all the stuff in a stack without clicking the "More" arrow, and folders that appear in stacks can be opened and browsed, too.

• If you click and hold an app icon in the Dock, all the windows open in that app will reveal themselves in the Exposé grid, lined up neatly. Using some key command or cursor gesture (which I don't know), you can even zoom in to one of the open windows, and check it out without leaving Exposé.

• If you grab a file, you can drag it to the dock and hold it over an app icon. This springs open App, and arranges the open windows of that app in Exposé, so you can easily drop the file where it needs to go. (I currently do this by holding the file with my mouse while doing a combo-keystroke to bring the window back into view, so I can see how this will make life easier.)

The image associated with this post is best viewed using a browser.

[Apple's Snow Leopard "Refinements"; Snow Leopard Full Coverage on Gizmodo]

Snow Leopard, otherwise known as OS X 10.6, was first announced at last year's WWDC, and we got a pretty comprehensive rundown of what to expect: serious 64-bit support; the ability to really use multi-core processors with Grand Central; GPGPU processing (that's graphics card processing, in English) with OpenCL; and more under-the-hood upgrades. There've been plenty of rumors since then, but here's the official word:

WHAT'S NEW:

FASTER PERFORMANCE

• Much of the codebase has been rewritten, for speed increases system-wide.

• Installation is 45% faster, which is considerate, I guess.

• General optimizations abound: opening JPEGs, for example, is now twice as fast in Preview. PDFs are 1.5x faster. Some of this could be down to the new 64-bit, multi-threaded underpinnings; mostly, though, it's just plain old software tweaking.

• Same goes for Mail: it's about twice as fast to launch, search and move messages.

• Installing Snow Leopard actually saves space: you'll get back 6GB of hard drive space over Leopard 10.5. Successive versions of OS X are usually faster, yeah, but much smaller? That's new.

SAFARI 4

• Javascript performance, which is basically the core issue in the browser wars nowadays, is up by 50%. Browsing as a whole is faster, and Safari 4 passes the Acid3 CSS test at 100%. It gets Coverflow (for history browsing), just like virtually every other part of OS X. "Fastest in the World", they say. In addition, Safari 4 now has "crash resistance", meaning Chrome-like threaded processes, so a single crashed tab doesn't take down the entire browser. More here.

MICROSOFT EXCHANGE SUPPORT

• According to our own Mark Wilson, "it looks like it should look." That means seamless integration with Mail, Contacts and iCal. The implementation looks fairly complete, and most importantly, it's standard in Snow Leopard—not part of a separate app suite.

QUICKTIME 10

• QT gets a new interface, looks like the iTunes video player. Hardware acceleration for video playback, too. You can do some quick video editing as well, like in older versions of Quicktime Pro, except with an iMovie-style visual timeline. It's very pretty, and a welcome improvement of the ultra-limited editing powers of previous QTs. This, of course, is now standard. Oh right, and there' a new, vaguely menacing icon.

NEW DOCK, EXPOSE

• It's a lot like regular Exposé, except it can be controlled from the dock, and offers more in the way of interactivity, i.e., dragging content between previewed windows. App grouping is now managed by from the dock icons. Nothing revolutionary, but it's nice to see tighter Exposé integration. I see little hints of Windows 7's awesome new taskbar, maybe?

• Sorta related, but not worthy of its own heading: you can magnify some icons in Finder, and preview video in thumbnails.

64-BIT, GPGPU, AND MULTI-CORE SUPPORT:

• 64 whole bits: All native OS X apps, like Mail, Quicktime, Finder, and Safari, are fully coded for 64-bit compatibility. This shouldn't have a massive effect on performance, but it's an inevitable progression, and a positive one. Previously.

• Multi-core support, i.e. Grand Central: We knew this was coming, but it bears repeating: the whole OS has been optimized to use all those fancy multi-core processors in your MacBooks and iMacs. This includes core apps. The API, which will allow developers to tap into Grand Central, which is essentially the software brain of the OS X multi-core engine, will expand support to third-party apps. Previously.

• GPGPU acceleration: Not much new here, but Snow Leopard will support GPU acceleration in non-graphics apps, when appropriate. Again, previously.

HOW MUCH, AND WHEN?

• Well, this is a hell of a surprise, but it fits with Apple's vision of Snow Leopard as a stopgap product: $29 to upgrade from Leopard, down from their regular $129 upgrade price. $49 for a family pack. It comes out in September, before Windows 7, and a developer preview is available from today. Anyone who buys a new Mac from June 8th can upgrade for a nominal $10 handling fee.

Apple Unveils Mac OS X Snow Leopard

SAN FRANCISCO, June 8 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ — Apple® today unveiled Mac OS® X Snow Leopard™, an even more powerful and refined version of the world's most advanced operating system and the foundation for future Mac® innovation. Snow Leopard builds on a decade of OS X innovation and success with hundreds of refinements, new core technologies, out of the box support for Microsoft Exchange and new accessibility features. Snow Leopard will ship as an upgrade for Mac OS X Leopard users in September 2009 for $29.

"We've built on the success of Leopard and created an even better experience for our users from installation to shutdown," said Bertrand Serlet, Apple's senior vice president of Software Engineering. "Apple engineers have made hundreds of improvements so with Snow Leopard your system is going to feel faster, more responsive and even more reliable than before."

To create Snow Leopard, Apple engineers focused on perfecting the world's most advanced operating system, refining 90 percent of the more than 1,000 projects in Mac OS X. Users will notice a more responsive Finder™; Mail that loads messages 85 percent faster and conducts searches up to 90 percent faster;* Time Machine® with up to 50 percent faster initial backup;* a Dock with Expose integration; a 64-bit version of Safari® 4 that boosts the performance of the Nitro JavaScript engine by up to 50 percent** and is resistant to crashes caused by plug-ins. Snow Leopard also includes an all new QuickTime® X, with a redesigned player that allows users to easily view, record, trim and share video to YouTube, MobileMe™ or iTunes®. Snow Leopard is half the size of the previous version and frees up to 6GB of drive space once installed.

For the first time, system applications including Finder, Mail, iCal®, iChat® and Safari are 64-bit and Snow Leopard's support for 64-bit processors makes use of large amounts of RAM, increases performance, and improves security while remaining compatible with 32-bit applications. Grand Central Dispatch (GCD) provides a revolutionary new way for software to take advantage of multicore processors. GCD is integrated throughout Snow Leopard, from new system-wide APIs to high-level frameworks and programming language extensions, improving responsiveness across the system. OpenCL, a C-based open standard, allows developers to tap the incredible power of the graphics processing unit for tasks that go beyond graphics.

Snow Leopard builds support for Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 right into Mac OS X Mail, Address Book and iCal so you can use these applications to send and receive email, create and respond to meeting invitations, and search and manage your contacts with global address lists. Exchange information works seamlessly within Snow Leopard so users can take advantage of OS X only features such as fast Spotlight™ searches and Quick Look previews. Snow Leopard is the only desktop operating system with out of the box support for Exchange 2007 and businesses of any size will find it easier to integrate Macs into their organization.

Every Mac includes innovative features and technologies for users with special needs, and Snow Leopard adds groundbreaking new features that make the Mac experience even more accessible to those with a vision impairment. Apple's Multi-Touch™ trackpad is now integrated with the VoiceOver screen reader so users can hear and navigate different parts of a window or the desktop by moving a single finger around the trackpad as if it were the screen. Snow Leopard also introduces built-in support for wireless bluetooth braille displays and the connection of multiple braille displays simultaneously to one Mac.

Pricing & Availability
Mac OS X version 10.6 Snow Leopard will be available as an upgrade to Mac OS X version 10.5 Leopard in September 2009 through the Apple Store® (www.apple.com), Apple's retail stores and Apple Authorized Resellers. The Snow Leopard single user license will be available for a suggested retail price of $29 (US) and the Snow Leopard Family Pack, a single household, five-user license, will be available for a suggested price of $49 (US). For Tiger® users with an Intel-based Mac, the Mac Box Set includes Mac OS X Snow Leopard, iLife® '09 and iWork® '09 and will be available for a suggested price of $169 (US) and a Family Pack is available for a suggested price of $229 (US).

The Mac OS X Snow Leopard Up-To-Date upgrade package is available to all customers who purchased a qualifying new Mac system from Apple or an Apple Authorized Reseller between June 8, 2009 and the end of the program on December 26, 2009, for a product plus shipping and handling fee of $9.95 (US). Users must request their Up-To-Date upgrade within 90 days of purchase or by December 26, 2009, whichever comes first. For more information please visit www.apple.com/macosx/uptodate. Snow Leopard requires a minimum of 1GB of RAM and is designed to run on any Mac computer with an Intel processor. Full system requirements can be found at www.apple.com/macosx/techspecs.

*Testing conducted by Apple in May 2009 comparing prerelease Mac OS X Snow Leopard v10.6 with shipping Mac OS X Leopard v10.5.7 using shipping MacBook® 2.0 GHz systems with 2GB of RAM and NVIDIA GeForce 9400M (256MB) and shipping generation iMac® 2.66 GHz systems with 2GB of RAM and NVIDIA GeForce 9400M (256MB).

**Testing conducted by Apple in May 2009 comparing 64-bit Safari 4 to 32-bit Safari 4 on prerelease Mac OS X Snow Leopard v10.6. Performance will vary based on system configuration, network connection and other factors. All testing conducted on an iMac 2.8 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo system running Mac OS X Snow Leopard, with 2GB of RAM. JavaScript benchmark based on the SunSpider JavaScript Performance test.

Apple ignited the personal computer revolution in the 1970s with the Apple II and reinvented the personal computer in the 1980s with the Macintosh. Today, Apple continues to lead the industry in innovation with its award-winning computers, OS X operating system and iLife and professional applications. Apple is also spearheading the digital media revolution with its iPod portable music and video players and iTunes online store, and has entered the mobile phone market with its revolutionary iPhone.

© 2009 Apple Inc. All rights reserved. Apple, the Apple logo, Mac, Mac OS, Macintosh, Snow Leopard, Finder, Time Machine, Safari, QuickTime, MobileMe, iTunes, iCal, iChat, Spotlight, Multi-Touch, Apple Store, Tiger, iLife, iWork, MacBook and iMac are trademarks of Apple. Other company and product names may be trademarks of their respective owners.

A little background: OmniWeb is based on a slightly modified version of WebKit, but used to differentiate itself from other browsers with novel features. Ad blocking, tab previews, saved browsing sessions, inbuilt RSS reading, single-windows browsing and per-site preferences could once justify OmniWeb's price, but now most of these features, and plenty more, can be found in free browsers. That's not to say that OmniWeb isn't a good browser, but it'll have a extremely hard time facing up against our increasingly capable choices in free software—especially the fantastic Safari 4.

The Omni Group is also setting a few more applications free, but OmniWeb is the by far the juiciest. [Cult of Mac]

The OS, developed by Named Fork, is based around that found on the Mac Plus (v3.0, presumably). If you can stomach the god-awful nu-metal soundtrack (or whatever they're calling it these days), the video runs through a demo of the different control schemes for using the OS with a touchscreen.

Admittedly, it looks like more work than it probably is, especially since you have to track down and convert the retro software yourself (more info here). But if I can play some Number Crunchers, and maybe a little Lode Runner, I'd gladly suffer some tedium to revisit my childhood technological awakening. [Named Fork via Nowhere Else via CrunchGear]

Also check out more images at Nowhere Else

"Ignoring fundamental principles of antitrust law, and the realities of the marketplace, Psystar contends that Apple has unlawfully monopolized an alleged market that consists of only one product, the Macintosh® computer."

It's doubtful that Psystar has the grounds to win or even the money to fight this case, but the stated principle here is kind of weird. The whole line of Macintosh computers is one product? Hardware that could run Mac OS comprises an "alleged market?" It's hard to quite make sense of what they mean other than "PLEASE DIE." We'll see what happens in court on November 3rd, when Apple passes that sentiment on to Psystar's face(s). [The Register, with full filing at ZDNet]

Here's the standard Vista desktop:

And here it is when it's been all Dockified:

Dell talks about customizing it in various ways by adding and deleting icons, changing colors and adding text:

There's no mention of whether you can move it to the bottom or sides, though. Wouldn't that be, uh, Mac friendly? All joking aside, I would like to say kudos to Dell for the cool execution. I, for one, can't wait to test it out.

[Dell]

Yep, you heard right: Apple showed off the OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard, due out in a year, to the attendees at WWDC, and let some details slip to the public, including:
• Optimization for multi-core processors
• GPU friendly (actually GPU utilization of highly parallel tasks generally done on a CPU)
• Supports "breakthrough" amounts of RAM—16TB to be precise
• New "modern" QuickTime X platform
• Safari with 53% faster JavaScript implementation
Yes, as we've heard, this is a lot less about cool user features and more about boots-on-the-ground stability—or in Apple SVP for Software Engineering's words, "perfecting the world's most advanced OS." There's no mention of continuing PowerPC support, but then again, there's no word about discontinuing it, either. Here's more from the horse's, I mean, predatory feline's mouth. Update: The official Snow Leopard site is live.

Apple Previews Mac OS X Snow Leopard to Developers

SAN FRANCISCO, June 9 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ — Apple(R) today previewed Mac OS(R) X Snow Leopard, which builds on the incredible success of OS X Leopard and is the next major version of the world's most advanced operating system. Rather than focusing primarily on new features, Snow Leopard will enhance the performance of OS X, set a new standard for quality and lay the foundation for future OS X innovation. Snow Leopard is optimized for multi-core processors, taps into the vast computing power of graphic processing units (GPUs), enables breakthrough amounts of RAM and features a new, modern media platform with QuickTime(R) X. Snow Leopard includes
out-of-the-box support for Microsoft Exchange 2007 and is scheduled to ship in about a year.

"We have delivered more than a thousand new features to OS X in just seven years and Snow Leopard lays the foundation for thousands more," said Bertrand Serlet, Apple's senior vice president of Software Engineering. "In our continued effort to deliver the best user experience, we hit the pause button on new features to focus on perfecting the world's most advanced operating system."

Snow Leopard delivers unrivaled support for multi-core processors with a new technology code-named "Grand Central," making it easy for developers to create programs that take full advantage of the power of multi-core Macs. Snow Leopard further extends support for modern hardware with Open Computing Language (OpenCL), which lets any application tap into the vast gigaflops of GPU computing power previously available only to graphics applications. OpenCL is based on the C programming language and has been proposed as an open standard. Furthering OS X's lead in 64-bit technology, Snow Leopard raises the software limit on system memory up to a theoretical 16TB of RAM.

Using media technology pioneered in OS X iPhone(TM), Snow Leopard introduces QuickTime X, which optimizes support for modern audio and video formats resulting in extremely efficient media playback. Snow Leopard also includes Safari(R) with the fastest implementation of JavaScript ever, increasing performance by 53 percent, making Web 2.0 applications feel more responsive.*

For the first time, OS X includes native support for Microsoft Exchange 2007 in OS X applications Mail, iCal(R) and Address Book, making it even easier to integrate Macs into organizations of any size.

*Performance will vary based on system configuration, network connection and other factors. Benchmark based on the SunSpider JavaScript Performance test on an iMac(R) 2.8 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo system running Mac OS X Snow Leopard, with 2GB of RAM.

Apple ignited the personal computer revolution in the 1970s with the Apple II and reinvented the personal computer in the 1980s with the Macintosh. Today, Apple continues to lead the industry in innovation with its
award-winning computers, OS X operating system and iLife and professional applications. Apple is also spearheading the digital media revolution with its iPod portable music and video players and iTunes online store, and has entered the mobile phone market with its revolutionary iPhone.