The PC Report

AppleInsider, the usual source for all sorts of Mac related rumours, has come out with a new rumour about the iMac line-up. They are claiming that Apple has finalised some new iMacs up to the stage where they have been rolling of the Taiwanese production lines for a couple of weeks now.

The new Macs are rumoured to be thinner, looking more like it’s range of LED Cinema Displays, and (finally, thank God) cheaper for us to buy. Also on the list of new features could be a previously rumoured Blu-ray drive, as well as some sort of audio enhancement to make the new iMacs the “most versatile ever.” No word on a release date for these or any other sort of details – it’s all rumours for now

During the first two weeks of its release, Snow Leopard outsold Apple’s two previous operating systems by a wide margin and set a record for the Mac maker.
Sales of Apple’s latest OS were more than two times higher than its predecessor, Leopard, and almost four times more than Leopard’s predecessor, Tiger, according to the NPD Group, which tracks retail sales, excluding online sales.

It’s likely that the low prices might be influencing upgrade decisions, even though it is “less feature focused”, as the article says.  It raises some good questions about the most effective release cycle. That is, Apple’s frequent and cheap releases (with minor changes) vs Microsoft’s slow and expensive releases (with major changes). I will be very interested to see how enthusiastically Windows 7 is greeted by the market in its early days of release.

It wasn’t so long ago that we reported a slip up on Apple’s part on their UK store, saying that Snow Leopard (the next version of Mac OS X if you didn’t know) will ship on August 28th. Well it looks like you can now order it via the Apple website as an upgrade for US$29, or US$49 for the family pack, shipping out on that same rumoured date: August 28th.

So much for September, Apple

While we haven’t actually heard from Apple, this is the best evidence we have of a Mac OS X Snow Leopard shipping date. The companies own site has Snow Leopard shipping on August 28th, but with no place to actually buy a copy yet.

It is unclear whether Apple planned to show this page, or whether it is some sort of glitch on their systems, but it looks like it’s pretty real. This new date, in August, throws out the old evidence that Snow Leopard might be shipping in September. We’ll just have to wait and see if the page gets taken down or not.

Update: The page no longer says August 28th, it now says September

According to MacRumours, Apple has finalised Snow Leopard and designated the “Golden Master” final build as 10.6 Build 10A432. This means the devs can stop working, as this should be the build shipped when the release date comes around next month.

Snow Leopard should bring some major speed increases over the old 10.5 “Leopard” and according to Apple, most system applications have made the switch to 64-bit. It is also the first release to drop PowerPC support completely; it’s about time if you ask me, as the last PowerPC Mac was released in 2005.

For all those Apple users out there, head down to Apple Software Updated to find 10.5.8 waiting for your installation. Like most Apple software, the feature list is minimal and the download is large, coming in at 165 MB – we don’t know why these updates have to be so large. Anyway, the update is fairly minor, seeing as though Snow Leopard is just ’round the corner. For the full changelog take a look after the break

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We haven’t been hearing too much about Apple’s latest version of OS X, Snow Leopard up until now. Snow Leopard (OS X 10.6) is set to launch in September, and even though there are no exact dates to when it will whip, Amazon has decided to put it up for pre-order

All types of Snow Leopard are up for pre-order, so head over there now if you want to grab a copy:

• Upgrade – US$30
• Family Pack Upgrade – US$50
• Box Set – US$170
• Family Pack Box Set – US$230
• Server – US$500