Mac OS X Snow Leopard has reached GM
According to reports, Apple’s Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard has reached the Golden Master (GM) status which means it’s ready for release. As previous reports from Apple and other sources said, the new operating will not introduce many new features but will be more stable, faster and smaller. Snow Leopard is the first Mac OS X operating system that will not run on Power PC Macintosh computers. Snow Leopard’s finder is completely rewritten which takes advantage of full 64 bit power of the CPU. Also the OS’s new footprint is said to be only 6GB compared to its predecessors which packs a whooping 11GB. That’s about 5GB of spared hard drive space.
Amazon.com is now accepting pre-orders for the new operating system which slates at $29 for single user upgrade DVD.
The Golden Master (GM) build number is claimed to be 10A432 according to reports from developers with access to the pre-release seeds at the Apple Developer Connection portal.
When Apple’s software reach a GM or Golden Master status, the next step is the Release to Manufacturer wherein the software is released for manufacturing so it can be burned into DVDs that will hit the shelves for consumers. The OS is reported to be released by September of 2009 which is about a month from now.
