Need Advice Snow Leopard

Definitely upgrade. Just keep in mind that, while unconfirmed, it's assumed that the $29 version will need to be installed on a Mac that already has Leopard installed, since it's considered an 'upgrade', thus the price.

Here's a list of new features for you to expect using Snow Leopard:

Mac OS X is the world's most advanced operating system. Built on a rock-solid UNIX foundation and designed to be simple and intuitive, it's what makes the Mac innovative, highly secure, compatible, and easy to use. Quite simply there is nothing else like it. Mac OS X. It's what makes a Mac a Mac.

Power of UNIX. Simplicity of the Mac.
Mac OS X is both easy to use and incredibly powerful. Everything--from the desktop you see when you start up your Mac to the applications you use every day--is designed with simplicity and elegance in mind. So whether you're browsing the web, checking your email, or video chatting with a friend on another continent, getting things done is at once easy to learn, simple to perform, and fun to do. Of course, making amazing things simple takes seriously advanced technology. Which is why Mac OS X is built on a rock-solid, time-tested UNIX foundation that provides unparalleled stability as well as industry-leading support for Internet standards.
Stunning graphics.
The most striking feature of a Mac is its elegant user interface, made possible by a graphics engine that's built to leverage the advanced graphics processor in every Mac. This engine provides the power for things like high-definition video, stunning graphic effects, and high-quality animations. Fonts on the screen look beautiful and extremely readable. A soft drop shadow makes it clear at a glance which window is active and which ones are in the background. Document previews using Quick Look are high resolution so you can actually read the text. And built-in support for the PDF format means you can view and create PDFs from almost any application in the system.
Perfect integration of hardware and software.
Since the software on every Mac is created by the same company that makes the Mac itself, you get a completely integrated system. When you have a Mac notebook, for example, it automatically detects and connects to available Wi-Fi networks. It wakes from sleep as soon as you open the display and automatically reconnects to networks so you can get back to work fast. And it gets the most out of your battery by spinning down the hard drive when it's inactive, by intelligently deciding whether the CPU or GPU is best suited to perform a task, and by dimming the screen in low-light conditions.
Highly secure by design.
With virtually no effort on your part, Mac OS X protects itself--and you--from viruses, malicious applications, and other threats. It was built for the Internet in the Internet age, offering a variety of defenses from online threats. Because every Mac ships with a secure configuration, you don't have to worry about understanding complex settings. Even better, it won't slow you down with constant security alerts and sweeps. And Apple responds quickly to online threats and automatically delivers security updates directly to your Mac.
Built for compatibility.
The versatility and power of Mac OS X make it compatible in almost any environment, including Windows networks. It works with virtually all of today's digital cameras, printers, and other peripherals without the need to download separate drivers. It opens popular file types such as JPG, MP3, and Microsoft Office documents. In addition, Mac OS X includes built-in support for the industry-standard PDF format, so you can read and create PDFs from almost any application in the system--perfect for sharing work with colleagues whether they use a Mac or a PC. And if you want to run Windows on your Mac, you can do that, too.
Reliable to the core.
The industrial-strength foundation of Mac OS X ensures that your computing experience remains free from system crashes and compromised performance. Occasionally an application might quit, but it won't affect the rest of your system. And Apple keeps everything running smoothly by releasing software updates that download automatically to your Mac. Many of these updates provide important security enhancements for the operating system. But they also update other Apple software installed on your Mac, including iPhoto, iMovie, and GarageBand. So with just a click, you can make sure that all your applications continue to run smoothly and safely.
Dock + Finder
The Dock in Mac OS X provides fast, one-click access to frequently used applications, folders, and even downloads from the Internet. The Finder makes working with your files and documents as easy as browsing your iTunes library.
What is the Dock?
The Dock at the bottom of the screen gives you quick access to your most frequently used applications and files. With its visually appealing, high-resolution icons, the Dock practically begs to be clicked. When you do, your applications spring to life instantly, and a bright signal tells you which applications are open.
You can set the Dock to remain at the bottom of the screen, framing your desktop picture and always visible. Or you can set it to tuck itself away, ready to return when you move the pointer to the bottom of the screen.
What's in your Dock.
The Dock comes loaded with icons for many of the applications included with your Mac--Dashboard, Mail, iCal, iPhoto, and so on. But as you'd expect, it's easy to customize. To add a new application or folder, just grab it from the Finder and move it onto the Dock. The Dock expands to make room for the new item, and if you have a lot of items, the icons scale to fit on your desktop. Removing and rearranging items is just as simple: Click and drag. Stacked in your favor.
Stacks screen
A stack is a Dock item that gives you fast access to a folder of files. When you click a stack, the files within spring from the Dock in a fan or a grid, depending on the number of items (or the preference you set). Mac OS X starts you off with two premade stacks: one for downloads and the other for documents. The Downloads stack automatically captures files you download from Safari, Mail, and iChat, and the Documents stack is a great place to keep things like presentations, spreadsheets, and word processing files. You can create as many stacks as you wish simply by dragging folders to the right side of your Dock.
Introducing the Finder.
The Finder is like home base for your Mac. Represented by the blue icon with the smiling face, it's one of the first things you see when you start working on your Mac. It lets you organize, view, and access practically everything on your Mac, including applications, files, folders, discs, and shared drives on your network.
Meet the sidebar.
The sidebar in the Finder window is your starting point when browsing your Mac. If you've used iTunes, you'll feel right at home. Like iTunes, the sidebar is organized into categories to make it easy to locate your stuff--frequently accessed folders, CDs and DVDs, computers on your local network, and so on. With a few clicks, you're on your way to finding what you need. The sidebar also features a handy Search For section. It uses Spotlight search to let you quickly find files you've modified today, yesterday, or in the past week, or find all images, movies, or documents. Just click one of the folders and you'll see an up-to-the-minute list of files. You can also create your own search folders and add them to the sidebar.
See your files in Cover Flow.
Mac OS X helps you navigate everything on your Mac visually with an innovation called Cover Flow. Using Cover Flow, you can flip through your documents as easily as you flip through music in iTunes. Each file is displayed as a large preview of its first page, so you can actually see the contents of a document before opening it.
Three more ways to view.
You can also see your files in list view, which lets you easily sort them in different ways, including by file name, date modified, or file type. You can see them as icons. Or you can see them in column view, which lets you navigate through multiple folders quickly.
Instant networking.
Any Mac or PC on your home network automatically appears in the sidebar, allowing you to easily share files between them and even use Spotlight and Cover Flow to search the other computers. And when you click a connected Mac, you can use screen sharing (if authorized), which lets you see and control another Mac as if you were sitting right in front of it.
Quick Look
Instantly preview the contents of your documents without ever opening them. Flip through multipage PDFs, watch full-screen video, view photo slideshows, and more. With a single click.
Opening files is so last year.
So you're flipping through files in the Finder, but you're looking for something specific and you don't have time to open lots of files to find it. Enter Quick Look, the innovative technology that gives you a sneak peek of entire files--even multiple-page documents and video--without opening them. All you have to do is select a file and press the Space bar. An elegant transparent window appears, showing you the contents of the file instantly.
See everything.
Quick Look works with nearly every file on your system, including images, text files, PDF documents, movies, Keynote presentations, Mail attachments, and Microsoft Word and Excel files. To see a file in Quick Look, just tap the Space bar or click the Quick Look icon in the Finder window. Then click the arrow icon to see the same file full screen--even video as it plays. If you want to open the file, just double-click the window and it launches the application that created the file.
A Quick Look back in time.
You can use Quick Look to your advantage when you're searching for files to restore in Time Machine. Once you locate the file you're looking for, use Quick Look to verify its contents before restoring it to the desktop.
View attachments, no detachment.
Quick Look also works in the Mail application in Mac OS X. Say you receive a message with a bunch of attachments. Instead of downloading and opening each one, you can use Quick Look to see them with a click. It's great for viewing PDFs, Microsoft Office documents, and other files. You can even view attached photos as a slideshow and add them to your iPhoto library with ease.
Spotlight
With Spotlight, you can find anything on your computer as quickly as you type: files, email, contacts, images, calendar events, and applications. And because it's built into the core of Mac OS X, search results update instantly whenever files change.
Stop looking, start finding.
Spotlight is the lightning-fast search technology built into Mac OS X that makes it easy to find what you're looking for, even if you don't know where to look. Conveniently available in the Mac OS X menu bar, the Spotlight search field gives you instant results as you start typing, encompassing not only files, folders, and documents but also messages in Mail, contacts in Address Book, iCal calendars, items in System Preferences, applications, and even dictionary definitions. Spotlight searches aren't confined to your computer--you can also search other computers on the network.
The need for speed.
Built into the core of Mac OS X, Spotlight delivers results so quickly because it indexes files on your computer in the background, so you never experience lag times or slowdowns. And when you make a change, such as adding a new file, email, or contact, Spotlight updates its index automatically, so search results are always up-to-the-moment accurate.
Searching with smarts.
When you search with Spotlight, you're actually accessing a comprehensive, constantly updated index that sees all the metadata inside supported files--the "what, when, and who" of every piece of information saved on your Mac--including the kind of content, the author, edit history, format, size, and many more details. Most document types, including Microsoft Word documents, Adobe Photoshop images, and email, already contain rich metadata. And because Spotlight indexes content as well, your search results include what appears inside a file or document, not just its title. When you click the document, you are immediately taken to that spot in the document with the search terms highlighted.
Smartly organized.
Thanks to the speed and flexibility of Spotlight, you'll discover countless new ways to organize your files. You can save the results of a search as a Smart Folder that automatically updates as you add, change, or remove documents on your Mac. Smart Folders contain files grouped together based on search criteria instead of physical location, so the same file can appear in multiple Smart Folders without moving from its original saved location on your system. No need to duplicate, shift, or update files: Spotlight Smart Folders keep everything organized for you.
It's in the Mail. (And more.)
In addition to the Finder, Spotlight search technology is built into other applications in Mac OS X: Mail, Address Book, iCal, System Preferences, Preview, even Safari. No matter which application you search, results appear immediately after you start typing a few letters. And your search is customizable. In Mail, for example, you can search in selected mailboxes or across all of them, and in individual fields (To, From, Subject) or entire messages. In Address Book, you can search the entire list or individual groups.

 

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Exposé
Instantly view all open windows in stunning style with a single keystroke. Exposé unshuffles overlapping windows on your desktop into an organized thumbnail view, so you can quickly locate and switch to any window or get to any file on the desktop.
From chaos to order.
If you like to work with many applications and documents at the same time, you probably spend time each day poking through your open windows just to uncover the one you need at the moment. Wouldn't it be great if all you had to do was press one key to snap all of that window chaos into order?
That's exactly what Exposé does. With one keystroke, Exposé instantly tiles all your open windows, scales them down, and neatly arranges them, so you can see what's in every single one. And you definitely can see every one, because Exposé preserves the visual quality of the window in its reduced size.
That's not all. Move from one tiled window to the next and you'll see its title displayed in the center of the window. When you find the window you need, just click it. Magically, every window returns to full size, and the window you clicked--whether it's a folder, a PDF, a QuickTime movie, or a Word document--becomes the active window.
Application specific.
Say you're a Photoshop maestro and often have up to a dozen documents open at the same time. Exposé makes finding the one you need incredibly easy. With another keystroke, Exposé instantly tiles your Photoshop windows while causing the windows of other applications to fade to gray. The clutter cleared, you can easily find the document you need. A click makes it the active window. You can use the Tab key to switch between open applications and associated tiled windows.
Return to your desktop.
There's one more feature. Press one key to push all the windows aside, giving you instant access to your desktop. Once you grab what you need, another keypress brings all the windows back. Want to open a document? Check to see if the CD or DVD you're burning in the background is ready? Or quickly locate and drag a file into an email as an enclosure? Exposé makes it easy.
Safari
Experience the web with the fast, easy-to-use web browser. With its simple, elegant interface and support for the latest Internet standards, Safari gets out of your way and lets you enjoy the web.
Surf fast.
Safari 4 outraces all other browsers. On even the most demanding Web 2.0 applications, Safari delivers blazingly fast performance thanks to the new Nitro Engine. For example, Safari executes JavaScript up to 30 times faster than Internet Explorer 7 and more than 3 times faster than Firefox 3. In addition, Safari offers top-flight HTML performance--the best on any platform--loading pages 3 times faster than Internet Explorer 7 and almost 3 times faster than Firefox 3. What does all that mean for you? Less time loading pages and more time enjoying them.
Distraction-free browsing.
Safari sports a clean, elegant look that keeps your focus where it belongs: on the content of the web page. The features you use most are just a click away, and an integrated Google search bar makes it easy to find what you're looking for.
Search, find, and organize.
The new Top Sites feature lets you enjoy a stunning, at-a-glance preview of your favorite websites without lifting a finger. Safari 4 tracks the sites you browse and ranks your favorites, presenting up to 24 thumbnails on a single page. Safari 4 also introduces a dramatic new way to revisit sites. Just type a word or phrase in the History Search field in Top Sites, and Safari quickly presents you with full-page previews of the websites that look exactly as they did when you last visited them. You flip through them just like in Cover Flow in iTunes or the Finder, then click to access the page you want.
Clip it.
Turn any web page into a Dashboard widget. Click the Web Clip button next to the address field in Safari and select exactly what you want your new widget to display. Then click Add, and Safari sends your Web Clip widget to Dashboard, where you can view it alongside your other widgets. You can even customize its border using built-in styles on the back of the widget. Your Web Clip widget is live and will update as frequently as the page from which it came.
Surf securely.
With support for the latest standards for secure access and information sharing on the web, Safari protects you whether you're browsing the Internet at home or on a public computer. Safari offers built-in antiphishing technology that detects fraudulent websites and warns you before displaying the information. It also supports EV (Extended Validation) Certificates, so you can feel confident shopping, updating account information, or paying bills online.
Kid-proof the Internet.
Start your kids' web exploration off on the right foot with Safari parental controls. Using the same technology that keeps your inbox free of junk mail, a content filter in Mac OS X takes a quick peek at websites before they load and tries to determine if they're suitable for kids. If they're not, Mac OS X blocks them from view. You can override this filter by creating lists of specific websites you want--or don't want--your children to see.
Mail, iCal, Address Book
It's three applications that work as one: Mail, iCal, and Address Book bring the power of Mac OS X to your email, calendar, and contacts. You get elegant, easy-to-use interfaces, lightning-fast searches, and complete integration across the applications and your Mac.
Mail: All your email accounts in one place.
Designed from the ground up specifically for email, Mail offers an elegant user interface that makes it easy to manage all your email from a single, ad-free inbox, even when you're not connected to the Internet. It works with most email standards--including POP3 and IMAP--and most popular email services, such as Gmail, Yahoo! Mail,¹ and AOL Mail. If you have more than one email account, no problem. Just add all your accounts to Mail and you'll be able to access everything from one central place.
Data, detected.
Mail does more than just show email. It also analyzes the contents to help you act on them. Say you get an email inviting you to dinner at Gino's Pizza tomorrow at 6 p.m. Mail not only recognizes that 6 p.m. is the time, it knows that "tomorrow" represents a date on a calendar. So you can add the invitation to your iCal calendar by clicking the date, whether it's an actual date (October 18) or a relative date (tomorrow). It also knows that Gino's is a place, so you can click the address to view a Google map of the restaurant's location. And if the message includes a phone number or email address, you can add it to Address Book with just a click.
Filtering the junk.
Mail includes an intelligent mail filter that automatically catches messages it thinks are junk. Junk mail is placed in a special folder in Mail so it doesn't clog up your inbox. If a junk message gets through, simply click the Junk button, and from then on, similar email will be placed in the Junk folder. The more you train Mail to recognize junk mail, the better it gets. Address Book: One place for all your contacts.
Address Book
Address Book gives you a flexible and convenient place to store contact information for your family, friends, and colleagues. You can import information from other applications, create distribution lists for clubs and groups, print address labels and envelopes, and more. Because Address Book is built on the industry-standard vCard format for storing contact information, your friends can send you cards that you can add to your own list by dropping them in--no typing required.
More than a great view.
Address Book does more than display card contents; it also lets you use them. Click an address to ask the web for a Google map showing the location. Click a home page URL to open the website. Click an email address to instantly send a message or start an iChat conversation.
iCal: A powerful desktop calendar.
iCal makes it easy to keep track of your busy schedule. You can create as many separate calendars as you need--one for home, another for school, a third for work, and so on. You can see all your calendars in a single window or choose to see only the calendars you want.
RSVP you.
With iCal, you can invite friends and family to events. iCal lets you create invitations using contact information from your Address Book, update your guest list, keep track of attendee responses, and receive the latest status information. A centralized notification box keeps all your invitations and responses in one easy-to-access location so you can manage events in iCal instead of your busy email inbox. And when you or another Mac user receives an iCal invitation in Mail, it's automatically added to iCal for you.
Find what you need.
Thanks to Spotlight, it's easy to find information in Mail, iCal, and Address Book. Within the applications, a search sorts through everything--all fields in an email, all information on a card or appointment--so you find every possible match. If you're not using the applications, you can still find messages, contacts, and appointments by using Spotlight search in the menu bar. Start typing a search term and Spotlight returns the related items immediately.
Smart Groups and Smart Mailboxes.
Spotlight technology helps you organize your mail and contacts in another big way: Smart Groups and Smart Mailboxes. You simply select the relevant criteria--say, every contact with a birthday in the next 30 days or every email sent by your boss--and your applications create a folder containing every item that meets your criteria. Best of all, the folders stay updated as new items are created. Smart Groups in Address Book appear in your Group list, and Smart Mailboxes in Mail appear just below your inboxes.
Fully integrated.
Because they're Mac OS X applications, Mail, iCal, and Address Book are fully integrated with each other and with other features of your Mac. For example, Mail and iCal use the contacts in your Address Book, so you can quickly send messages or invitations to individuals and groups. Mail can access your iPhoto library, so it's easy to email pictures to your friends and family. If you receive an attachment, Mail lets you use Quick Look to view its contents without saving the attachment and opening another application.
Syncing included.
Part of what makes Address Book and iCal so powerful is seamless syncing. They can sync the contact and calendar information on your Mac with your iPhone or other mobile phone, PDA, or iPod touch, so it follows you everywhere. And with a MobileMe account, your contacts and calendars stay up to date across multiple Mac computers and on the web, so you can access your information from any computer with an Internet connection.

 

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iChat
iChat is a rich instant messaging application that works on the AIM network and makes it easy to stay in touch with friends and family using text and video, whether they're on a Mac or a PC.
IM me.
A powerful instant text messaging application, iChat is loaded with great features that make sending a quick message fun and easy. Simple text chats feel like natural conversations, with icons and thought bubbles that make it easy to see who's saying what. And you can transmit any kind of file--from a web address to a photo--by simply dragging it into your chat. Pictures display right in the message window, web links open in a browser with a click. In short, iChat is the best way to IM.
Don't just type it--say it face to face.
Most Mac computers include a built-in iSight camera and mic. When you use them with iChat, you get the easiest way to have high-quality video and audio chats with your friends and family. You can chat with just one other person or make it a party by starting a multiway chat. Featuring a three-dimensional view, iChat practically puts everybody in the room with you. View their faces reflected into space, just as if they were sitting around a conference room table. And with video backdrops built into iChat, you can make it look like you're chatting from the Eiffel Tower, under the sea, or your own custom backdrop.
Click to begin.
With its intuitive interface, iChat shows you when your buddies are available for a chat. Bright icons indicate their online status and whether they're capable of a video chat or just audio. To start a chat, click the camera or phone icon to send an invitation. To add more people, click the icons for the meeting attendees on your buddy list and each colleague steps into your virtual office.
Show off (without showing up).
Why wait for a darkened room and a projector to present vacation photos or Keynote slides? Now you can do it all remotely, right in iChat. Put on a photo slideshow, click through a Keynote presentation, or play a movie--in full screen, accompanied by a video feed of you hosting--while your buddy looks on.
Share and share alike.
Thanks to iChat screen sharing, you and your buddy can observe and control a single desktop, so you can easily collaborate with a colleague, browse the web with a friend, or pick plane seats with your spouse. Share your own desktop or your buddy's--you both have control at all times. iChat initiates an audio chat when you start a screen sharing session, so you can talk things through while you're at it.
Child's play.
With iChat at home, you can enforce your "no talking to strangers" rule using parental controls that allow you to decide who your children can chat with online. Approve the buddies you trust and iChat blocks all attempts to send and receive IMs with anyone else. iChat also automatically hides or displays online status so that only buddies approved by you can see if your kids are online.
iTunes
iTunes plays all your digital music and video. It syncs content to your iPod, iPhone, and Apple TV. And it's an entertainment superstore that stays open 24/7.
Entertainment made easy.
Forget rifling through stacks of CDs or flipping through channels. iTunes puts your entire music and video collection a mere click away, giving you an all-access pass to thousands of hours of digital entertainment. Browse. Organize. Play. All from your Mac or PC.

• Browse.
  View your library by artist, album, episode, year, rating--any way you want. A quick search reveals results as you type.
• Organize.
  Turn CDs into digital music by importing them to iTunes. Organize your entire collection with custom playlists.
• Play.
  Shuffle songs to mix up your groove. Listen to music from other computers on your network. Play video using onscreen controls.

Everything, to go.
You have music and video in iTunes. You have photos, contacts, and calendars on your computer. You want to get it all on your iPod or iPhone. iTunes syncing does exactly that. And wireless syncing to Apple TV puts music and video from your iTunes library on the big screen.
The world's #1 online music store--and more.
iTunes is an application that plays all your digital music, podcasts, and videos. It syncs content to your iPod, iPhone, and Apple TV. And it's a 24/7 entertainment superstore that lets you browse and buy over 10 million songs, rent or buy blockbuster movies, get HD episodes of your favorite TV shows, download applications for your iPhone or iPod touch, subscribe to free podcasts, and shop for audiobooks.
Time Machine
Never again worry about losing your digital files. Time Machine automatically saves up-to-date copies of everything on your Mac--photos, music, videos, documents, applications, and settings. If you ever have the need, you can easily go back in time to recover anything.
Set it, then forget it.
Time Machine works with your Mac and an external hard drive. Just connect the drive and assign it to Time Machine and you're a step closer to enjoying peace of mind. Time Machine will automatically back up your entire Mac, including system files, applications, accounts, preferences, music, photos, movies, and documents. But what makes Time Machine different from other backup applications is that it not only keeps a spare copy of every file, it remembers how your system looked on a given day--so you can revisit your Mac as it appeared in the past.
Every change, every hour.
Following the initial backup of your entire Mac, Time Machine automatically makes incremental backups every hour, every day, copying just the files that have changed since your last backup. And it does this all in the background so you can continue working while Time Machine is busy copying your files. Time Machine saves the hourly backups for the past 24 hours, daily backups for the past month, and weekly backups for everything older than a month.
Go back in time.
Say you accidentally deleted a file you meant to save. Simply enter the Time Machine browser and you'll see exactly how your computer looked on the dates you're browsing. You can browse for files using Cover Flow or perform a Spotlight search to find what you need. Use the timeline to select a specific date, or let Time Machine fly through time to find your most recent changes. Before recovering a file, use Quick Look to verify the contents of the file, then click Restore to bring it back to the present.
Ready when you are.
When your mobile Mac is connected to your backup drive, Time Machine works as you'd expect. When it isn't connected, Time Machine also works as you'd expect. It keeps track of which files have changed since the last backup and backs them up to your backup drive the next time you connect. On any Mac, if Time Machine is unable to perform a backup, that's duly noted in its preference pane.
Migration with style.
If you're setting up a new Mac with files from an old Mac, Time Machine can help simplify the process. Just use Migration Assistant to copy portions of any Time Machine backup to a new Mac, or select "Restore System from Time Machine" in the Leopard DVD Utilities menu. Choose any date recorded in Time Machine to set up your new Mac exactly as your previous Mac was on that date.
Built for compatibility.
Mom always said, "Play nice with others." Your computer should, too. With Mac OS X, you can use Microsoft Office, connect to industry-standard printers and cameras, and even run Windows.
Office on your Mac.
A native version of Microsoft Office is available for Mac OS X, and it features a Mac-friendly interface that lets you create documents with Word, presentations with PowerPoint, and spreadsheets with Excel just like on a Windows PC. And it's compatible with Microsoft Office for Windows, so you can easily share documents with friends and colleagues. Even if you don't have Office installed on your Mac, you can use Quick Look to take a peek at Office documents without having to open an application.
Industry-standard bearer.
Thanks to its support for industry standards, Mac OS X works with virtually all email providers and websites. It also lets you view the most common file types, including Office documents, PDFs, images, text files, MP3s, videos, ZIP files, and more.
So if you're moving files from a PC or if your friends and colleagues send you files, you can rest assured they'll work on your Mac. And if you buy your Mac at an Apple Retail Store, an Apple Genius can transfer your files from your PC for you. (They'll even recycle your old PC.)
Relax. Your camera, printer, and mouse work, too.
Almost any device that connects to a computer via USB, audio cable, or Bluetooth will work with a Mac. That includes digital cameras, external hard drives, printers, keyboards, speakers, and more.
You can even use a right-click mouse with a Mac. And with thousands of device drivers included with Mac OS X, you can start using these devices as soon as you plug them in--no need to download additional software.
It runs Windows, too.
Have a Windows application you need to use once in a while? No problem. Every new Mac lets you install Windows XP and Vista and run them at native speeds, using a built-in utility called Boot Camp.
Setup is simple and safe for your Mac files. After you've completed the installation, you can boot up your Mac using either Mac OS X or Windows. (That's why it's called Boot Camp.) Or if you want to run Windows and Mac applications at the same time--without rebooting--you can install Windows using VMware or Parallels software.
Connect to PCs over a network.
The Finder not only lets you browse files on your Mac, it also makes it easy to find files on other computers--both Mac and PC--on your home network. Computers that allow file sharing automatically show up in the Shared section of the Finder sidebar, allowing you to browse files and folders you have permission to view.
Mac OS X has you covered.
Mac OS X is designed with security in mind. Its built-in defenses help keep you safe from viruses and malware without the hassle of constant alerts and sweeps.
Defense against viruses and malware.
Innocent-looking files downloaded over the Internet may contain malicious applications, or malware, in disguise. That's why files you download using Safari, Mail, and iChat are screened to determine if they contain applications. If they do, Mac OS X alerts you, then warns you the first time you open one. You decide whether to open the application or cancel the attempt. And Mac OS X can use digital signatures to verify that an application hasn't been changed since it was created.
With virtually no effort on your part, Mac OS X offers a multilayered system of defenses against viruses and other dangerous malware. For example, it prevents hackers from harming your programs through a technique called "sandboxing"--restricting what actions programs can perform on your Mac, what files they can access, and what other programs they can launch. Other automatic security features include Library Randomization, which prevents malicious commands from finding their targets, and Execute Disable, which protects the memory in your Mac from attacks.
Stay up to date. Automatically.
When a potential security threat arises, Apple responds quickly by providing software updates and security enhancements that can be downloaded automatically and installed with a click. Apple works with the incident response community, including the Forum of Incident Response and Security Teams (FIRST) and the FreeBSD Security Team, to proactively identify and quickly correct operating system vulnerabilities. In addition, Apple cooperates closely with organizations such as the Computer Emergency Response Team Coordination Center (CERT/CC).
Easy to customize.
With Mac OS X, it's easy to customize and use security features. Setting up secure file sharing, for example, involves a quick trip to System Preferences. FileVault lets you encrypt all the files in your Home folder with just a few clicks and a password of your choosing. The firewall comes preconfigured to block online intruders, but it's easy to make whatever changes you want.
Exercise parental control.
As a parent, you want your kids to have a safe and happy experience on the computer. Mac OS X keeps Parental Control an eye out even when you can't. With a simple setup in Parental Controls preferences, you can manage, monitor, and control the time your kids spend on the Mac, the sites they visit, and the people they chat with.
Don't go phishing.
Phishing is a form of fraud in which online thieves try to acquire sensitive information such as user names, passwords, and credit card details by creating fake websites that look like legitimate companies. The antiphishing technology in Safari protects you from such scams by detecting these fraudulent websites. If you visit a suspicious site, Safari disables the page and displays an alert warning you about its suspect nature.
Surf safely.
Mac OS X makes it easy to stay safe online, whether you're checking your bank account, sending confidential email, or sharing files with friends and coworkers. Features such as Password Assistant help you lock out identity thieves who are after personal data, while built-in encryption technologies protect your private information and communications.
Security without the hassle.
Mac OS X won't slow you down with constant Password Assistant security alerts and sweeps. Every Mac ships with a secure configuration so you don't have to worry about understanding complex settings. Just turn your Mac on and start working. When you need to be aware of something, it will let you know. And if you want to change the security configuration, just open System Preferences and make any adjustments.
More Power to Your Mac.
Since 2001, the breakthrough technologies and rock-solid UNIX foundation of Mac OS X have made it not only the world's most advanced operating system but also extremely secure, compatible, and easy to use. Snow Leopard continues this innovation by incorporating new technologies that offer immediate improvements while also smartly setting it up for the future.