Official Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard) ship date: October 26th

Apple has officially announced that Mac OS X Leopard will go on sale Friday, October 26 at 6:00 p.m. at Apple?s retail stores and Apple Authorized Resellers, and and the Apple online store is now accepting pre-orders.

A press release says:

"Leopard is packed with more than 300 new features and introduces a brand new desktop with Stacks, a new way to easily access files from the Dock; a redesigned Finder that lets users quickly browse and share files between multiple Macs; Quick Look, a new way to instantly see files without opening an application; Spaces, an intuitive new feature used to create groups of applications and instantly switch between them; and Time Machine, an effortless way to automatically back up everything on a Mac."

Apple has also posted a full feature listing.

Pricing Leopard will be priced at $129 for a single user license. The Mac OS X Leopard Family Pack is a single-household, five-user license that will be available for a suggested retail price of $199.

Mac Up-To-Date The standard Mac OS Up-To-Date upgrade package is available to all customers who purchased a qualifying new Mac system from Apple or an Apple Authorized Reseller on or after October 1, 2007 for a shipping and handling fee of $9.95 (US).

System Requirements Leopard requires a minimum of 512MB of RAM and is designed to run on any Macintosh computer with an Intel, PowerPC G5 or G4 (867 Mhz or faster) processor.

Other interesting system requirements:

• Front Row requires a Mac with built-in IR and an Apple Remote.
• DVD Player requires a 1.6GHz processor or faster for improved de-interlacing.
• iChat: Photo Booth and backdrop effects require an Intel Core Duo or faster processor.
• Developer tools require 1GB of memory and an additional 3GB of available disk space.

Mac OS X 10.5 Server Mac OS X Server version 10.5 Leopard will also be available on October 26 at Apple's retail stores and through Apple Authorized Resellers for a suggested retail price of $499 (US) for a 10-client edition and $999 (US) for an unlimited-client edition.

A press release says:

"Leopard Server presents new features for effortless setup, management and monitoring of systems on the network. Server Assistant configures server applications, network settings such as IP addresses and DNS configurations and user accounts with just a few clicks. Server Preferences simplifies management of users, groups and key server applications, and a Server Status Dashboard widget remotely monitors activity and usage. Leopard Server also eliminates the need to manually set up Leopard clients by automatically configuring client applications, including file sharing, Mail, iChat, iCal, Address Book and VPN from user information stored on the server."

Feedback? Late-breakers@macfixit.com.

Previous coverage

Troubleshooting-related changes in Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard)

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