Apple has finally announced the release date for their new OS, Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard. You can pre-order Leopard at the Apple Store with free shipping and they promise it will arrive on Friday October 26th. You can also pre-order it at Amazon. Amazon is offering a $20 rebate when you order Leopard and Parallels at the same time, and is also currently charging $20 less for Leopard than Apple is. Amazon says they’ll ship Leopard on Friday October 26th.

Check it out at the Apple Store (click here) or at Amazon (click here).

Leopard has been highly anticipated, especially since the release of Microsoft’s competing OS, Windows Vista. Vista has made less than a favorable impression on the marketplace and many people are anxious to see what the Leopard experience offers.

Things Apple has made clear are that Leopard offers numerous UI improvements, including a long-awaited revamp of the Finder, and changes to the dock. Its applications have been enhanced, including changes to Mail to make it more competitive with Outlook (not Apple’s words, mine),; improvements to iCal, including group scheduling; Spaces, which allows you to use multiple desktops; Time Machine, which provides continuous backups; full 64-bit support in the OS… and many many other changes. For a full list of them you can check Apple’s web site.

The full 64-bit support is nice… all recent Intel Macintoshes can run 64 bit code. The original Core Duo machines cannot, and any PowerPC machine that doesn’t have a G5 processor in it is also stuck at 32 bits. Microsoft has had a very bumpy path to 64 bits, selling a separate 64-bit version of Windows (even with Windows Vista), with very few 64-bit native applications or drivers available for it. MacOS X promises a seamless 64 bit experience, which should be very nice indeed.

Spaces is the feature I’m probably most excited about. Having multiple desktops really helps me manage my attention; I keep email in one desktop, non-development-related web browsing in another, and my work area in a third. I’ve tried third party software and it’s all been lacking… buggy, difficult to use. Spaces is well integrated with Expose and should provide a much better experience.

Leopard also includes the real release of Apple’s “Boot Camp” software, which facilitates installing and running Microsoft Windows on your Macintosh. Boot Camp includes Microsoft-certified drivers for your Mac. If you’ve been using the Boot Camp Beta which Apple provided quite a long time back then you’ll need to upgrade to Leopard in order to continue using it - the beta expires soon.

Note that there’s an educational discount for Leopard, and that educational institutions may be able to charge even less for it. Also, if you have purchase a new or refurbished Macintosh between October 1 and the end of December, you qualify for a copy of Leopard for only $9.95.

Leopard requires 512MB of memory (but seriously, if you want to do anything with it you’ll almost certainly want more), 9GB of available disk space, an Intel CPU or PowerPC G4 or G5 processor, and a DVD drive.

So - if you want Leopard as quickly as possible, either order it directly from Apple, hoof it on down to an Apple Store at 6PM on Friday October 26th, or if you can wait a few days and want to save a few bucks and save some money on Parallels as well, then order it from Amazon instead.

Parallels, if you’re not familiar with it is virtualization software that runs on Intel Macintoshes and allows you to run Microsoft Windows, or other operating systems like Linux, concurrently with MacOS X. It’s been essential for me doing web development; it allows me to test with Microsoft Internet Explorer under Windows without having to boot up Windows separately from my Mac or have to use a second machine.

[tags]leopard, macintosh, operating system, macos x, apple[/tags]

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