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There’s no doubt that many of our readers are hotly anticipating the launch of Snow Leopard this Friday. Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster thinks it will be popular enough to move 5 million copies through the month of September, which could earn Apple an additional $66 million in revenue.

Frankly, the money is a drop in the bucket compared to Apple’s usual revenues. But when it comes to the number of copies, we think Munster is being unusually conservative in his estimate. When Leopard shipped in October 2007, the installed Mac base was certainly lower than it is now. Back then, Apple moved 2 million copies of Leopard—at $129 each—in its first weekend on store shelves. For a further comparison, it took Apple over a month to sell 2 million copies of Tiger.

Since then, Apple has been selling over 2 million Macs per quarter, all of which represent potential upgraders for Snow Leopard. Additionally, Snow Leopard only costs $29 (in the US), and even less if you bought a new Mac after June 8, which qualifies you for a $10 upgrade. We’re betting that Apple can move even more than 5 million upgrades in the month of September… it might even come close to cracking the number in the first weekend.

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Apple has released what is probably the final patch for Mac OS X 10.5, also known as Leopard. The patch covers 18 flaws, most notably a problem with the handling of PNG images that left Apple systems vulnerable to remote code execution.

Patches have also been included for the handling of RAW images, and for the ImageIO system that allows applications to read and write popular image file formats.

The wireless connectivity of the operating system has also been patched to improve compatibility with Airport, and ensure that connections are more solid. Bluetooth support has also been improved, Apple said.

One of the patches addresses problems with the MobileMe application. Previously a user’s credentials were left on the system when they signed out, but this fault has been fixed.

Apple’s XML system has also been beefed up, in light of problems in the XML library systemit uses. These flaws were announced today and affect a wide variety of code based on open-source software.

This is likely to be the last update for the Leopard operating system before Snow Leopard is released in September. Pre-sales on Snow Leopard have already begun and demand has proved very strong.

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