It’s official; Apple’s Mac OS 10.5 Leopard is now available for pre-order through the Apple Store and will ship and be available in stores next Friday, October 26 at 6pm. Leopard is boasting over 300 new features in the OS including Time Machine for backups, a new Finder for browsing and sharing files, Spaces for navigating between multiple applications, Quick Look so you don’t have to open an application just to peak at a file, improved chatting and mail applications and a cool dock with Stacks as you can see in the photo here. The new OS also has parental controls to help children safely surf and communicate and the Safari 3 web browser.

This release does come out as 10.5 and not a “.1″ release which may give many a feel of a more mature release but we’re betting we’re not the only ones that might hold out a revision or two before upgrading. The upgrades are retailing for $129 for a single user or $199 for a 5-user family pack.

Mac OS X Leopard