At its WWDC '09 event yesterday, Apple presented Snow Leopard, “an even more powerful and refined version of the world’s most advanced operating system.” Set to become the foundation for future Macs, Snow Leopard delivers hundreds of refinements, new core technologies, support for Microsoft Exchange and new accessibility features, Apple has revealed. The company also introduced Mac OS X Snow Leopard Server, a full 64-bit UNIX server OS that includes Podcast Producer 2 and Mobile Access Server.

“We’ve built on the success of Leopard and created an even better experience for our users from installation to shutdown,” Bertrand Serlet, Apple’s senior vice president of Software Engineering, said. “Apple engineers have made hundreds of improvements, so with Snow Leopard your system is going to feel faster, more responsive and even more reliable than before.”

Apple claims that Snow Leopard will have great impact on the userbase. The company promises that users will notice stuff like:

– a more responsive Finder;
– a Mail app that loads messages 85 percent faster and conducts searches up to 90 percent faster;
– a Time Machine with up to 50 percent faster initial backup;
– a Dock with Exposé integration;
– a 64-bit version of Safari 4 that boosts the performance of the Nitro JavaScript engine by up to 50 percent;
– QuickTime X, which allows users to easily view, record, trim and share videos.

And these are just some of the obvious changes. Apple also mentioned more subtle, under-the-hood tweaks in the OS at yesterday's event. Furthermore, during the keynote address, Apple's Phil Schiller unveiled that Snow Leopard would be half the size of the previous version of Leopard, freeing up to 6GB of drive space once installed.

Snow Leopard is probably best characterized for the fresh technologies it employs, such as Grand Central and OpenCL. Thanks to the latter, developers will be able to tap into the vast gigaflops of GPUs and redirect all that processing power to general-purpose computing.

On the Server side, OS X 10.6 is also designed to take advantage of multi-core processors and address massive amounts of memory, while remaining fully compatible with 32-bit applications, Apple explains. The new server OS should easily handle server operations like web and application hosting, file sharing and mail, the company adds in the press release.

“Snow Leopard Server is our best and fastest server operating system ever, and unlimited client licenses make it an incredible value for any size business,” Bertrand Serlet pinpointed. “With easy to use new features like Podcast Producer 2 and Mobile Access Server, anyone can set up and manage its powerful services with just a few clicks.”

The Client version of Mac OS X Snow Leopard will be available in September as an upgrade to Leopard users for just $29. The Server is, of course, much more expensive, but is now priced more affordably at $499 with unlimited client licenses. Snow Leopard Server will also ship in September.

Visit Apple here to learn more about Snow Leopard, and here for more information on Snow Leopard Server.