Apple has announced that Mac OS X 10.6 will go on sale this Friday August 28 and Apple online store is now accepting pre-orders.

If you have an Intel Mac, Snow Leopard is a no-brainer upgrade with loads of refinements to 10.5 Leopard and its $29 low upgrade price. Among them are: core support for 64-bit processor, system applications such as Finder, Mail, iCal, iChat, Safari etc are now 64-bit; more responsive Finder; Mail loads messages up to twice as fast; Time Machine backups 80 percent faster for initial backup; build-in Microsoft Exchange Server support; new QuickTime X; 64-bit of Safari that is up to 50 percent faster.

Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard will be released next month, but you can pre-order your copy from Amazon and have it shipped to you as soon as it is officially released. Snow Leopard can run only on Intel-based Mac.

Please note that if you have purchased a new Mac on or after June 8, 2009, you can upgrade to Snow Leopard cheaper for $9.95 plus tax under Apple’s Snow Leopard Up-to-Date program. Visit Apple website for detail on this program.

Available for pre-order on Amazon are:

• Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard single user edition at $29. This is for users who has Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard installed. Apple priced the upgrade at low price to entice adoption. If you have Tiger or earlier Mac OS X version, you need to purchase the Mac Box Set in order to get Snow Leopard.

• Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard Family Pack (5-User) at $49. This is Snow Leopard upgrade for Leopard users for up to 5 Macs.

• Mac OS X Server 10.6 Snow Leopard at $499. This is the server version of Snow Leopard.

• Mac Box Set With Snow Leopard at $169. Box Set includes Snow Leopard, iLife 09 and iWorks 09.

• Mac Box Set Family Pack With Snow Leopard at $229. Box Set includes Snow Leopard, iLife 09 and iWorks 09, for up to 5 Macs.

Apple kicked off its 2009 Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) with a keynote address led by marketing chief Phil Schiller. It is a satisfying presentation that answers the curiosity of many Apple fans: iPhone 3GS and Snow Leopard are announced with details and launch dates, new iPhone OS 3.0 apps highlights, and MacBook Pro line refreshes with new 13-inch models.

There are many details and it take sometimes to go through. The best coverage is Gizmodo’s Apple WWDC 2009 Live Coverage. Apple also posted the WWDC 2009 Keynote Address Video online, suitable for the rest of the millions of us who could not make it there.

We are happy with all the announcements, but below are 8 things Apple could do better with its 2009 WWDC Keynote:

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Two iPhone technologies, CoreLocation and Multi-Touch, are coming to the Mac. These software frameworks are included in the latest developer seed of the upcoming Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard, allows developers to add CoreLocation (ability to identify the current latitude and longtitude of your Mac) and multi-touch features to Mac applications.

In the iPhone, CoreLocation makes use of the hardware’s GPS or WiFi to identify its location. Current Macs will make use of less accurate WiFi method for obtaining the location since there is no GPS technology included. We suspect that future Macs especially MacBooks will have built-in GPS technology as standard.

Current Macs already have multi-touch support via the multi-touch trackpad in newer MacBooks. By including the multi-touch APIs framework, Apple is making it easier for developer to multi-touch enabled their application. We are guessing Apple will extend the support for multi-touch to include touch-panel LCD in future Macs.