After months of speculation and nearly a year and a half since the last release, Apple are set to launch the fifth major iteration of OS X on October 26th. Originally previewed by Steve Jobs at the WWDC event in August 2006 Apples latest Big Cat has big a long time coming and has been eagerly anticipated by the Mac faithful despite it apparently only offering minor feature upgrades compared with OS X Tiger.

Many features that have been rumoured for the OS have failed to materialise and the ones that have so far been demonstrated have been greeted with fairly mixed opinions. Many have said that this really feels like a point upgrade rather than a major release and on the strength of the demo’s provided by Steve Jobs there has been little to counter this claim. However if you read through the detailed list of improvements in Leopard on Apples web site it does become clear that whilst not perhaps the leap forward that Tiger was there are a lot of additions and updates that together will make this version a worthwhile upgrade for most Mac owners. It is also interesting to note that there are large number of enhancements in the area of security which will certainly help OS X maintain and extend its significant lead over Windows as the most secure desktop OS.

Some of the interesting items that have not so far been widely publicised include :-

Dynamic Web Filter - Protect your children from websites with unsuitable content. 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.

Automator UI Recording and Playback - Add even more capabilities to your workflows. 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.

Bootcamp 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.

Front Row Streaming iTunes Content - Enjoy your iTunes library — and more. Front Row lets you play iTunes content located on other Macs and PCs in your house.

Sandboxing - Enjoy a higher level of protection. Sandboxing prevents hackers from hijacking applications to run their own code by making sure applications only do what they’re intended to do. It restricts an application’s file access, network access, and ability to launch other applications. Many Leopard applications — such as Bonjour, Quick Look, and the Spotlight indexer — are sandboxed so hackers can’t exploit them.

The Apple site lists over 300 enhancements and it is definately worth looking through these to see just how and where Leopard will benefit you personally. On the face of it it looks like there is probably something for everyone here.

Roll on 26th October !