Always mindful of its competition, Apple comes right out of the gate saying that Windows 7 is just Microsoft’s tool to get them out of a hole — that it’s nothing more than just a new version of Vista. Ouch. Pot shots aside, Snow Leopard is on today’s menu and it doesn’t look to disappoint. For starters, Exchange support can now be found in Mail, iCal and Address Book. The indispensable Finder is still the same, but with slight tweaks for speed and more seamless navigation. Expose is now built right into the dock to help keep you organized and all your windows can be viewed through that single icon on the dock making viewing and navigation a little simpler than before. Application installations are also 45% faster than before — not too shabby for those of us with little to no patience. Snow Leopard will also feature handwriting recognition for the trackpad, which is pretty intense. Hit the jump for more.
Safari 4 is getting a lot of attention is this new OS X build, and Apple claims it’s now 7.8x faster than IE8. The major change comes along with 64-bit JavaScript performance which is 50 percent faster than before. It’s also crash resistant! Apple says that crashes are caused mainly by plugins, but now if a plugin should crash, all your windows remain in tact; all you have to do is refresh the page and all is saved. One of the biggest updates to Safari is history search: If you click on the lower right corner, your entire history is shown as a cover flow of web pages instead of just a boring list. On the Quicktime front, along with a new logo it’s getting an aesthetic upgrade along with a new technology called HTTP streaming.
So how much to upgrade from Leopard? $29 once it becomes available in September. Awesome. There will also a family pack available for $49.
