San Francisco - Apple quietly announced Mac OS X, code named Snow Leopard, following the Steve Jobs keynote address at the companyis World Wide Developer Conference in San Francisco on Monday. The next version of Mac OS X will focus on performance improvements and preparing Appleis desktop and laptop platforms for future operating system versions.

Mac OS X Snow Leopard will be optimized for multi-core processors with a new technology dubbed Grand Central, will be able to use graphic processing units more efficiently, will include out-of-the-box support for Microsoft Exchange 2007 in iCal, Address Book and Mail, and according to the company will support "breakthrough amounts of RAM." It also will include a new media platform called QuickTime X.

Bertrand Serlet, Appleis senior vice president of Software Engineering, commented "We have delivered more than a thousand new features to OS X in just seven years and Snow Leopard lays the foundation for thousands more."

Many of the features in Snow Leopard will be built on technologies developed for the version of OS X used on the iPhone.

Apple is not saying yet how much Mac OS X Snow Leopard will cost, but the company does plan on shipping the new operating system in about a year.