On Monday, Apple previewed the next generation of its popular Mac OS X operating system — Snow Leopard. The OS was one of several introductions on the opening day of the Mac-maker’s Worldwide Developers Conference in San Francisco.

Snow Leopard aims to build on the marketplace success of OS X Leopard. It marks the next major release of Apple’s operating system, often touted for its ease of use.

“We have delivered more than a thousand new features to OS X in just seven years, and Snow Leopard lays the foundation for thousands more,” said Bertrand Serlet, Apple’s senior vice president of software engineering. “In our continued effort to deliver the best user experience, we hit the pause button on new features to focus on perfecting the world’s most advanced operating system.”

A Focus on OS Optimization

As Serlet suggested, Apple is taking a different approach with Snow Leopard. Instead of focusing primarily on new features, Snow Leopard will enhance

the performance of OS X, set a new standard for quality, and lay the foundation for future OS X innovation, according to the company.

Apple said Snow Leopard is optimized for multi-core processors, taps into the computing capability of graphics processing units (GPU), enables large amounts of RAM, and features a new, contemporary media platform with QuickTime X.

plus noteworthy is the fact that, for the first instance, OS X will include native support for Microsoft Exchange 2007 in Apple’s Mail, iCal and Address Book applications. That, Apple, said, will build it easier to integrate Macs into organizations of any size.

Hardware Support

Snow Leopard delivers support for multi-core processors with a new technology code-named Grand Central that makes it easy for developers to create programs that take full advantage of multiple cores.

Snow Leopard further extends support for contemporary hardware with Open Computing Language (OpenCL), which lets any…

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