Snow Leopard available on August 28th

Rumours of a pre-September release of Snow Leopard have proven themselves to be true, as Apple today announced the official release date of Leopard’s successor. Apple retail stores and Apple authorized resellers will carry Snow Leopard this Friday, and Apple’s online store is now accepting pre-orders. It will be available as an upgrade for Leopard users for only $29.

Not that it matters whether you actually do have Leopard at all. A confirmed report states that the $29 upgrade disc will even work on a newly formatted drive, despite Apple’s implications of otherwise. Although this might end up breaching a ToS agreement, savings of over $100 by skipping the official Snow Leopard box set and still getting the full-blown OS makes upgrading difficult to resist. What to expect? Quicker startup, shutdown, and application speed, full 64-bit and multi-core support, OpenCL, better Universal Access support, and support for Microsoft Exchange.

[via Apple]