Mac OS X v10.6 Snow Leopard - Technical Specifications

General requirements

  • Mac computer with an Intel processor

  • 1GB of memory

  • 5GB of available disk space

  • DVD drive for installation

  • Some features require a compatible Internet service provider; fees may apply.

Feature-specific requirements

Time Machine

requires an additional hard drive or Time Capsule (sold separately).

Photo Booth

requires an iSight camera (built in or external), USB video class (UVC) camera, or FireWire DV camcorder. Backdrop effects when using a DV camcorder require fixed focus, exposure, and white balance.

Boot Camp

requires Windows XP with Service Pack 2 or Windows Vista (sold separately).

Screen sharing

in iChat and the Finder requires a 128-Kbps Internet connection (300 Kbps recommended).

DVD Player

requires a 1.6GHz processor or faster for improved deinterlacing.

iChat

  • Audio chats require a microphone and a 56-Kbps Internet connection.

  • Video chats require an iSight camera (built in or external), USB video class (UVC) camera, or FireWire DV camcorder; and a 128-Kbps upstream and downstream Internet connection.

  • Backdrop effects when using a DV camcorder require fixed focus, exposure, and white balance.

  • Some iChat features offer better performance and quality with higher system capabilities. More details

Exchange Support

requires Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 Service Pack 1 Update Rollup 4. Auto-setup requires enabling the Autodiscovery feature of Microsoft Exchange Server.

QuickTime X movie capture

requires iSight camera (built-in or external), USB video class (UVC) camera, or FireWire DV camcorder.

QuickTime H.264 hardware acceleration

requires a Mac with an NVIDIA 9400M graphics processor.

Developer tools

require 1GB of memory and an additional 3GB of available disk space.

OpenCL

requires one of the following graphics cards or graphics processors:

  • NVIDIA GeForce 9400M, GeForce 9600M GT, GeForce 8600M GT, GeForce GT 120, GeForce GT 130, GeForce GTX 285, GeForce 8800 GT, GeForce 8800 GS, Quadro FX 4800, Quadro FX5600

  • ATI Radeon 4850, Radeon 4870

64-bit support

requires a Mac with a 64-bit processor.

Grand Central Dispatch

requires a Mac with a multicore processor.

What’s in the Box

  • Installation DVD

  • Printed and electronic documentation

Applications

  • Address Book

  • Automator

  • Calculator

  • Chess

  • Dashboard

  • Dictionary

  • DVD Player

  • Font Book

  • Front Row

  • iCal

  • iChat

  • Image Capture

  • iSync (supported devices)

  • iTunes

  • Mail

  • Photo Booth

  • Preview

  • QuickTime Player

  • Safari

  • Stickies

  • System Preferences

  • TextEdit

  • Time Machine

Utilities

  • Activity Monitor

  • AirPort Utility

  • Audio MIDI Setup

  • Bluetooth File Exchange

  • Boot Camp Assistant

  • ColorSync Utility

  • Console

  • DigitalColor Meter

  • Disk Utility

  • Exposé

  • Grab

  • Grapher

  • Java Preferences

  • Keychain Access

  • Migration Assistant

  • Network Utility

  • Podcast Capture

  • RAID Utility

  • Script Editor

  • Script Utility

  • Setup Assistant

  • Spaces

  • System Profiler

  • Terminal

  • VoiceOver Utility

  • X11

Key Technologies

  • AppleScript

  • Aqua

  • Bonjour

  • CDSA security architecture

  • Cocoa, Carbon, and Java

  • ColorSync

  • Core Animation

  • Core Audio

  • Core Image

  • Core Video

  • Grand Central Dispatch

  • H.264

  • Inkwell

  • OpenCL

  • OpenGL

  • PDF

  • Quartz Extreme

  • QuickTime X

  • 64-bit computing

  • Sync

  • Unicode 5.1

  • Universal Access

  • UNIX

  • USB and FireWire peripheral support

  • Xgrid

Development

  • Xcode 3 IDE with Interface Builder 3

  • Instruments

  • Dashcode

  • AppleScript Studio

  • Automator 2

  • Shark

  • GCC compiler and toolset (original project by FSF.org)

  • DTrace (original project by Sun)

  • Complete Java JDK, including javac, javadoc, ANT, and Maven tools

  • Apache web server

  • AppleScript

  • Ruby and the Ruby on Rails frameworks

  • Python

  • Perl

  • PHP

  • SQLite

Languages

  • English

  • Japanese

  • French

  • German

  • Spanish

  • Italian

  • Dutch

  • Swedish

  • Danish

  • Norwegian

  • Finnish

  • Traditional Chinese

  • Simplified Chinese

  • Korean

  • Brazilian Portuguese

  • Portuguese (Portugal)

  • Russian

  • Polish