FinancialWire: Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard Coming Next Month

Apple is set to release its Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard operating system as early as the end of March, FinancialWire reports according to sources.

Apple has declined comment on when the forthcoming OS for Mac computers will be released, the report says.

The Leopard, which is the sixth major version of Mac OS X, was previewed in August 2006. The main innovation that Leopard will bring is the 64-bit computing along with non-emulated support for 32-bit applications and drivers.

After the Apple’s announcement of Mac OS X 10.5, the Inquirer reported that the Leopard’s non-emulated support for 32-bit software and drivers is a great advantage compared to 64-bit version of Windows Vista. The 64-bit Vista uses 32-bit emulation layer called Window on Windows (WOW) to run 32-bit programs, while the 32-bit drivers do not work under the 64-bit version of Microsoft’s new OS.

However, both Vista 64 and Leopard are able to utilize more than 4GB of system memory, which is the limit for 32-bit OSs. According to benchmarks published on various technology web sites, the 64-bit operating systems show better performance in some computing tasks compared to the 32-bit, even when operating with less than 4GB of RAM.

The new features of Mac Leopard include “Time Machine”, an automatic back up and restore software, and so called “Spaces” to instantly switch between groups of applications required for various tasks. There are also improvements to Spotlight search feature and improved iChat, while the new Dashboard will contain around 2,500 Widgets. It is announced that the Leopard will include “Core Animation” developer tool for creating motion graphics with only little coding.

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