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Apple announces Leopard release date

Apple have just announced the release date of Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard: October 26th, with it available for pre-order today.

Anxious to show that they delay was for a reason, they have listed every single feature on their site for you to peruse at your leisure.

Worthy of note:
* New Finder (long overdue)
* Updated OpenGL
* Multicore Enhanced
* New Airport Menu (now shows locked networks)
* Self-Tuning TCP (tunes network settings for optimum performance)
* Improved printer support. Support in Tiger was good but had lots of room for improvement.
* Tagged Downloaded Applications. Leopard asks for permission before opening downloaded files. Sounds a bit like a Vista feature, but we'll see how irritating it is once it ships.
* Library Randomization. Hackers often hack a specific memory address to execute a system function but Leopard relocates system libraries to random addresses.
* AutoFS automatically mounts and dismounts network volumes on separate threads. This means that the system no longer hangs for 10 mins (literally) when a network drive is disconnected for whatever reason.
* Improved 64-bit support. Steve showcased it at the Keynote. He opened a 4 GB image file in both Tiger and Leopard side-by-side. The Tiger one took a very long time to open and the Leopard one was near-instant.

This is in addition, of course, to the features already announced. And even without the new features, Apple updates always improve system performance. You'd expect them to get slower with time but they actually get faster.

My upgrade strategy is to try it out on my laptop that I use for general stuff first, and if something happens it's not a major loss. I then upgrade it on my other laptop that runs video editing and visual effects applications (again no major loss if it breaks). Assuming all goes well and it is compatible with the apps I am using, I then upgrade one desktop machine before upgrading the rest. Finally, I upgrade the server (that's always a headache) and all is done. We want to upgrade as soon as possible to make use of the performance improvements Leopard offers. These would increase our productivity a lot (our ultimate goal) without compromising quality and without a major financial investment.

Update: To clarify, when you pre-order you will get it on your doorstep on October 26th with the free delivery option. It is actually being shipped out before the 26th for those that pre-order. With that in mind, ignore the options for faster delivery on the checkout page.