Apple to ship Leopard on Oct 26th

Apple confirmed its upcoming Leopard operating system will be released Friday October 26 at 6.00pm.The price tag for its Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard is $129. Apple.com and Apple resellers are taking pre-orders now.

Leopard requires a minimum of 512MB of RAM and is designed to run on any Macintosh computer with an Intel, PowerPC G5 or G4 (867Mhz or faster) processor. Full system requirements can be found here.

Apple touts the operating system as introducing 300 new features. One of the new features is Quick Look which Apple says is a way to “instantly see files without opening an application.” Another enhancement has been to Finder which will now let you quickly browse and share files between multiple Macs.

New features include:

• Quick Look, a new feature that lets you see the contents of a file without opening said file
• Stacks, a new way to access files from the Dock
• Time Machine backup
• Redesigned Finder that makes it easier to browse and share files between computers on your home network
• Updated Mail designs
• Improved parental controls
• Boot Camp exits beta
• Web Clip lets you save web content as Dashboard widgets

A single user license will cost $129 while you can pick up a family 5-pack for $199.

Read a interesting post on Apple’s Leopard vs. Microsoft’s Vista here.