Apple announced Monday that the latest version of its Mac OS X operating system would be available starting Friday, August 28.

Snow Leopard is Apple's biggest operating system update since the tech company moved from the Classic OS in 2001.

Apple says that Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard is half the size of the previous operating system and frees up to 7GB of drive space once installed. Apple also said it will be faster. Shutting down will reportedly be 75 percent faster and waking up from sleep mode will be twice as quick.

Snow Leopard also only supports Macs with an Intel-based processors, not the older PowerPC processors.

The new software has been available for pre-order from Apple, but the actual shipping date had officially been set at mid-September until now.

The price for Mac users to upgrade their current operating system is $29.

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