Snow Leopard—the newest version of the OS X operating system—is scheduled to be released this Friday, the 28th.

The update will cost only $29 as opposed to $129—the price of most other OS X updates. The reason for the minimal price is because the update is much smaller than updates in the past have been. Instead of focusing on adding a host of new features, Apple has decided to refine aspects of OS X Leopard and make them “Better. Faster. Easier.”

Some of the notable improvements include a dramatically smaller footprint. Installing Snow Leopard is supposed to give you 7 GB of disk space back. The Finder has also been rewritten and is apparently faster than ever before. iChat is also supposed to have a four times higher resolution.

In my opinion, the biggest new feature is probably QuickTime X, the new version of QuickTime that is included with Snow Leopard. QuickTime X refers to the entire system that runs Snow Leopards audio and video playback. A new QuickTime player is also included with features allowing you to easily trim video just like you do on the iPhone and quickly upload videos to YouTube. It also looks like they are ditching the whole QuickTime Pro upgrade thing and giving all the features to you for free. It also now supports HTTP live streaming.

Another major feature addition is Exchange support. With Exchange, Apple hopes to make Macs more popular in the workplace. They boast the simplicity of setting up a new account and the streamlined experience of having everything in one place.

Anyway, if you want Snow Leopard, which I highly suggest, you can pre-order it online now or you can buy it at an Apple Store starting Friday. I have also heard that they are giving away free T-Shirts at the Apple Store on Friday so it might be fun to get your copy there if you have a chance. The interesting thing for me is that this is going to be the first time we, as a family, have to buy something from Apple as an ordinary consumer.

We were a PC family for the longest time. We got our first Mac when my dad started working at Apple in 2003. Ever since we have become incredibly for-Mac and anti-PC. We now each have our own iPhone and Mac Laptop and we have a bunch of other Apple products scattered around our house. Anyway, you could certainly say that my dad getting a job at Apple has changed us for the better, brought us to the good side. That tidbit aside, we have never spent a penny on Apple software, not once. Now that my dad no longer works at Apple, we will have to join the masses and pay $29 this Friday. This should be interesting. I’m excited to get a free shirt!