new Mac OS Oct. 26

Figures...after I review a MacBook, Apple is about to release a new version of the operating system...

"Mac OS X version 10.5 Leopard will be available on October 26 at Apple’s retail stores and through Apple Authorized Resellers for a suggested retail price of $129 (US) for a single user license, and online pre-orders can be made through Apple's online store (www.apple.com)...The Mac OS X Leopard Family Pack is a single-household, five-user license that will be available for a suggested retail price of $199 (US). Volume and maintenance pricing is available...The standard Mac OS Up-To-Date upgrade package is available to all customers who purchased a qualifying new Mac system from Apple or an Apple Authorized Reseller on or after October 1, 2007 for a shipping and handling fee of $9.95 (US). Leopard requires a minimum of 512MB of RAM and is designed to run on any Macintosh® computer with an Intel, PowerPC G5 or G4 (867 Mhz or faster) processor. Full system requirements can be found at www.apple.com/macosx/techspecs.

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...new Braille support for VoiceOver with Apple Braille Regular, Apple Braille Outline, and Apple Braille Pinpoint fonts.

"...Alex — a new English male voice...

"...refreshable Braille displays. VoiceOver detects and configures as soon as you plug them in. No additional software or setup is required.

"For the first time ever on a desktop computer, you can use a Braille display while installing or upgrading your operating system.

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Application-Based Firewall

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"..parental controls...

"Control exactly how much time your children spend with the computer each day. Limit total daily usage and define hours the computer can or can’t be used (set differently for weekdays and weekends)...

"...Apple technology automatically trys to detect inappropriate content and prevents those web pages from appearing. You can override the filter by identifying sites you wish to explicitly allow or disallow certain websites.

"...Leopard logs websites visited and applications used. It also maintains a list of people who have chatted with your child using iChat and a transcript of each text chat session.

"...setup and monitor parental controls on your child’s Mac from any Mac on your home network.

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"...TextEdit automatically save copies of your document at a specified time interval.

"...TextEdit support for the Word 2007 and OpenDocument formats for reading and writing.

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"...iChat recording...stores completed audio chats as AAC files and video chats as MPEF-4 files...

"In Leopard, iChat allows you to log in to all your chat accounts simultaneously, whether you use .Mac, AOL, Google Talk, or Jabber.

"Show nearly any file on your system through an iChat video conference. Put on an entire photo slideshow, click through a Keynote presentation, play a movie, and more — in full screen, accompanied by a video feed of you hosting.

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"Synchronize Address Book on your Mac with your Yahoo! address book. Just enter your Yahoo! account information in Address Book preferences to get started.

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"...Use a new action called Watch Me Do that lets you record a user action (like pressing a button or controlling an application without built-in Automator support) and replay as an action in a workflow.

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"Copy, open, modify, or delete files in Mac OS X that you saved to your Windows partition. Leopard understands the Windows FAT32 disk format.

"Run Windows XP and Windows Vista on your Mac at native speed with full compatibility. (Windows not included.)

"Install Windows without affecting your existing files. Boot Camp Assistant carves out the necessary disk space required by Windows automatically.

"Microsoft WHCL-Certified Windows Drivers...Enjoy the unique hardware features of your Mac including the iSight camera, trackpad scrolling, keyboard backlighting, and volume keys using fully compatible Windows drivers.

"Easily delete Windows and restore the disk space being used by the Windows partition back to Mac OS X.

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http://www.apple.com/macosx/