Apple's website now includes an additional section for the much-rumored, now-confirmed Snow Leopard. The alpine cat will change "focus" for OS X users, but also for developers, rather than add tons of new features, Apple reveals. Nevertheless, Snowpard will include out-of-the-box support for Microsoft Exchange 2007, as well as QuickTime X, a streamlined, next-generation media playing platform.

"Since 2001, Mac OS X has delivered more than a thousand innovative new features," Apple notes on its website. "With Snow Leopard, the next major version of the world's most advanced operating system, Mac OS X changes more than its spots, it changes focus. Taking a break from adding new features, Snow Leopard... builds on Leopard's enormous innovations by delivering a new generation of core software technologies that will streamline Mac OS X, enhance its performance, and set new standards for quality," the Cupertino folks claim.

Apple also says Snow Leopard dramatically reduces the footprint of Mac OS X. The OS will be a more efficient home tool, giving users valuable hard drive space for their music and photos, since it can (theoretically) handle up to 16TB of RAM. More RAM makes applications run faster, since the most part of their data can be kept in physical RAM instead of on your slow hard disk. "To accommodate the enormous amounts of memory being added to advanced hardware," Apple says Snow Leopard extends the 64-bit technology in Mac OS X, confirming recent rumors about Snow Leopard's nature.

Snow Leopard is also optimized for multicore processors. The OS taps into the vast computing power of graphic processing units (GPUs), while "Grand Central," a new set of technologies built into Snow Leopard, will make it much easier for developers to "create programs that squeeze every last drop of power from multicore systems."

Apple assures fans that Mac OS X Snow Leopard will launch in approximately a year from now.