PRESS RELEASE
11 June 2007
Apple Announces New Mac OS X Server Leopard Features
SYDNEY, Australia—12 June 2007—Apple today announced groundbreaking newfeatures of Mac OS X Server version 10.5 Leopard that make it even easier for users toset up and manage. Scheduled to ship in October, Leopard Server is the most significantimprovement to the server operating system since Mac OS X Server was launched, introducing newfeatures such as a wiki server, making it easy to connect groups over a shared intranet;Podcast Producer, the ideal way to automatically produce and publish podcasts to iTunesor a blog; and Spotlight™ Server to quickly find content stored on other servers.Leopard Server also includes the new iCal Server, based on the CalDAV open standard thatworks with Leopard’s new iCal application.
“Only Apple can deliver an advanced server operating system packed with over 250 newfeatures on the same day as our client OS,” said Philip Schiller, Apple’s seniorvice president of Worldwide Product Marketing. “With no client access licenses, LeopardServer is the most affordable way to bring innovative server features, such as groupcalendaring and a wiki server, to everyone from small businesses to large educationalinstitutions.”
Small businesses and workgroups without an IT department can take advantage of LeopardServer’s ability to automatically configure Leopard clients for use on the server,including file sharing, Mail, iCal, iChat, Address Book and VPN. Leopard Server also includesa new setup interface with a built-in Network Health Check, a new Server Preferencesapplication and a server status Dashboard widget.
With the wiki server, groups can easily create and edit collaborative web pages, called wikis,with a few clicks of a mouse. The wiki server also maintains a complete history to restoreprevious entries and merge or compare different versions. Podcast Producer is the easiest wayfor anyone to record content, automatically upload it to the server and convert it into apodcast. Using Xgrid™, Podcast Producer can leverage Macs on the network to encode thevideo, and the podcast can then be delivered over the Internet to a blog, iTunes, or even tomultimedia enabled mobile phones over high speed wireless networks using QuickTime StreamingServer.
Apple has made scheduling across different calendar programs simple with iCal Server toco-ordinate events, schedule meetings and track time more effectively. iCal Server uses theopen CalDAV standard for integration with leading calendar programs, including iCal 3 inLeopard, Mozilla’s Sunbird and OSAF’s Chandler. In addition, Apple's Directorymakes it easy to search for people in an organization and view their contact information,picture, colleagues, groups and even see a location map.
Spotlight Server takes Spotlight’s lightning-fast desktop search capability to thenetwork server level. Designed for workgroups with shared documents, projects and files,Spotlight Server delivers search results of content stored on mounted network volumes. Contentindexing is done automatically and transparently on the server so searches are always fast andup-to-date.
Leopard Server’s core services, including Apache 2, MySQL 5, Postfix, Cyrus, PodcastProducer and QuickTime Streaming Server are 64-bit, allowing users to take full advantage oftheir 64-bit hardware’s performance and processing power and work with larger data sets.Since Leopard Server is fully 32-bit compatible, users can run 32-bit and 64-bit applicationsnatively side-by-side. Leopard Server is also optimized to take full advantage ofIntel’s latest multi-core processors.
Other new features in Leopard Server include:
- Server Admin 4 with new file sharing and permission controls, tiered administration and options for organising servers into smart groups;
- iChat Server 2 to securely communicate over instant messaging with others on different systems outside an organisation’s firewall;
- External Accounts to enable Leopard users to store their home directory on an external FireWire or USB portable drive;
- a new System Imaging Utility that uses a workflow-based editor to create customised images that can include Boot Camp partitions;
- Xgrid 2 featuring GridAnywhere for ad hoc distributed computing in environments without dedicated controllers, and Scoreboard for prioritising job distribution to the fastest available CPU; and
- QuickTime Streaming Server 6 with support for 3GPP Release 6 bit rate adaptation for smooth streaming when delivering content to mobile phones regardless of network congestion.
Pricing & Availability
Mac OS X Server version 10.5 Leopard is scheduled to ship in October and will be available through the Apple Store(www.apple.com.au) and Apple Authorised Resellers for a recommended retailprice of A$699 inc GST for a 10-client edition and A$1499 inc GST for an unlimited-client edition.
Mac OS X Server version 10.5 Leopard is scheduled to ship in October and will be available through the Apple Store(www.apple.com.au) and Apple Authorised Resellers for a recommended retailprice of A$699 inc GST for a 10-client edition and A$1499 inc GST for an unlimited-client edition.
- Apple, the Apple logo, Mac, Mac OS, Macintosh, iTunes, Spotlight, iCal, Xgrid, QuickTime, FireWire, Boot Camp and Apple Store are trademarks of Apple. Other company and product names may be trademarks of their respective owners.