Apple has announced the official release date for its next OS, Mac OS X Leopard, and started to take preorders. Leopard will go on sale Friday, October 26 at 6:00 p.m. at Apple’s retail stores and Apple Authorized Resellers, while Apple's online store is already taking preorders.

"Leopard, the sixth major release of Mac OS X, is the best upgrade we’ve ever released," said Steve Jobs, Apple’s CEO. "And everyone gets the ‘Ultimate’ version, packed with all the new innovative features, for just $129."

Quite clearly, Jobs was being ironic towards Windows Vista Ultimate. Microsoft has been under fire for selling Vista in a plethora of versions, while failing to provide on the Ultimate version as promised.

In addition to the $129 single license, Apple offers a very affordable Mac OS X Leopard Family Pack, which is a license for five users from a single household, which will retail at $199. Apple also announced that Mac OS X Server Leopard will also go on sale on Friday, October 26. It will reportedly be going for $499 for a 10-client edition and $999 for an unlimited client edition.

Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard requires a minimum of 512MB of RAM and is designed to run on any Macintosh computer with an Intel, PowerPC G5 or G4 (867 MHz or faster) processor.

"This is going to be great for Mac momentum, which has already been strong for the past few year years. This is just one more thing on top of that," Apple's vice president of marketing, Phil Schiller, told Reuters.

Apple claims its Leopard features more than 300 new features, such as a new desktop which includes the redesigned 3D Dock with Stacks; a backup feature called Time Machine which lets users easily back up all of the data on their Mac, find lost files and even restore all of the software on their Mac; the complete Boot Camp release, which makes it possible to run Windows natively on Intel-based Macs (you need a separate Windows install kit and license, of course); improved Parental Controls, providing automatic identification of unsuitable content before allowing website access, time limits and activity logs that can be accessed from any Mac on a home network, and other parental control features, etc.

In April, Apple was forced to push back Mac OS X Leopard’s release date from June to October to ensure the timely release of the highly anticipated iPhone. The company may release a native software development kit (SDK) for the iPhone as soon as January, according to a BusinessWeek report. The idea behind the delay is allegedly that Apple needed to get out Leopard first, because the new SDK for the iPhone uses some of its unique features.