The wait for Snow Leopard is over: on Monday, Apple announced that the latest version of its Mac OS X operating system would be available starting Friday, August 28. The company had previously said that the update would ship in September, but speculation intensified that it would ship earlier than anticipated after a glitch on Apple's Web site late last week.



Apples announcement:
"Snow Leopard builds on our most successful operating system ever, and we're happy to get it to users earlier than expected," said Bertrand Serlet, Apple's senior vice president of software engineering. "For just $29, Leopard users get a smooth upgrade to the world's most advanced operating system and the only system with built-in [Microsoft] Exchange support."

The company said in a news release that, for Snow Leopard, Apple engineers refined 90 percent of the 1,000 projects that currently make up its operating system.

Among the anticipated features will be what Apple promises to be faster applications, including e-mail and Web browser Safari 4, while freeing up 7 GB of drive space, compared with the current system.