Leopard Still on Schedule for "Spring 2007"

[MacRumors]

Despite some questionable rumors that Apple was delaying Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard until October, Jupiter Research's Michael Gartenberg reports that an Apple representative "confirmed the reports are wrong and Leopard is still scheduled to ship in this spring as they previously announced."

Again, "Spring 2007" gives us a timeframe up to and including June, which is when the Worldwide Developer's Conference takes place.

Meanwhile, there has also been recent speculation that Leopard is not far enough along to ship in April as (Page 2) rumored.

[Multimedia]

June 11 looks more and more like Leopard & Santa Rosa in one big Super-Duper SteveNote.

[ipedro]

I'm hoping to get upgrade my creative communications business with an 8-core MacPro and Leopard... a MacBook Pro just doesn't cut it anymore.

June seems like a good time to do it.

[GanleyBurger]

I sold my early 2006 intel mac recently to be in a position to buy a brand new computer when the newest product line hits (e.g. newest chips, model, etc.).

Does this mean that if Mac might delay OS X 10.5 potentially until June that we may not get a new product line until May or June also? That would suuuuuuuuck!!! Yes, I hope the 8 core tower comes out in April (or before), but could this potentially mean 2 or 3 more months for MBPs or 24" imacs are updated???

I just can't see Mac releasing new Macs with 10.4.9. Also... why don't they just call the new operating system OS X 11.0 ????

[Eidorian]

Does 10.4.10 seem more likely now? (Barring the strange numbering. )

I predicted a Leopard/Santa Rosa tie in awhile back.

[bdkennedy1]

Well, Apple Said that the Apple TV's were supposed to ship on time until the date they were supposed to ship and then delayed them 3 weeks.

[Wild-Bill]

Originally Posted by Multimedia

June 11 looks more and more like Leopard & Santa Rosa in one big Super-Duper SteveNote.

Well I think we all remember the last SteveNote. A disappointment for most. If I have to wait until June for a new Mac Pro I'm not going to be happy.

(yeah, I'm sure Steve is worried that Wild Bill won't get his Mac Pro in a timely manner... )

[splashman]

If Apple had any doubts that Leopard would be ready for the Spring ship date, they would certainly not mislead the press at this late date. Ergo, I believe it will ship at WWDC. No reason to ship sooner.

I'm greatly looking forward to watching all the naysayers (Enderle, et al) eat crow following WWDC. I suggest everyone create a bookmark folder called "Negative Nellies" and fill it with links to the Leopard doubters. Then we can all have fun posting our favorites in the "Leopard available now" comment thread in June.

[GanleyBurger]

Honestly... I could care less about a new operating system....

I want the newest chips, memory and models...

Can I get a witness !?!?!?!?!?

[NewSc2]

Originally Posted by GanleyBurger

Honestly... I could care less about a new operating system....

I want the newest chips, memory and models...

Can I get a witness !?!?!?!?!?

Actually... I'm just the opposite. Couldn't care less about new models, but a new OSX =

[iMacZealot]

But what about Final Cut Studio 6? Isn't that supposed to require Leopard (among other things)? And isn't that out in April? How, then, could Leopard ship in June?

I seriously am going to NEED NEED FCS6 because I'm too limited by FCE 3.5 and I'm going to start doing a lot of work (paid work, that is) soon.

[siurpeeman]

Originally Posted by NewSc2

Actually... I'm just the opposite. Couldn't care less about new models, but a new OSX =

i agree. i'm not in the market for a new mac (actually, i'm in the market for a used/refurb one), so all i'm wanting right now is a bit of leopard/ilife/iwork.

[GanleyBurger]

Originally Posted by NewSc2

Actually... I'm just the opposite. Couldn't care less about new models, but a new OSX =

It's just that each time a new OS X update comes out, the music software companies, the audio hardware companies, and the virtual instrument companies usually take 2 to 4 weeks to offer a counter update. Nothing is more frustrating to than having to back-date OS X because third parties are playing catch-up. If Mac realeses 10.5, it's probably another month before several 3rd party companies are totally up to date...

Just my 2 cents

[Multimedia]

Originally Posted by iMacZealot

But what about Final Cut Studio 6? Isn't that supposed to require Leopard (among other things)? And isn't that out in April? How, then, could Leopard ship in June?

I seriously am going to NEED NEED FCS6 because I'm too limited by FCE 3.5 and I'm going to start doing a lot of work (paid work, that is) soon.

They're gonna reveal it April 15. But I doubt it'll ship before Leopard does. Same thing for the 8 core Mac Pro. We'll need Leopard to properly manage all those cores. Tiger doesn't have that intelligence built into it.

[GanleyBurger]

Originally Posted by siurpeeman

i agree. i'm not in the market for a new mac (actually, i'm in the market for a used/refurb one.

I just sold my early 2006 Core Duo Imac. Even with the Dual 2.0 Intel chip, it was quite slow (even with two gigs of ram and the 256 graphics card). I know that sounds crazy , but Core Duo was hardly "zippy" at all.

I, too, would love to buy a refurb or new system now with Core 2 Duo, but with the release of the newest OS X, I am afraid that Leopard is really only going to perform greatly on the newest technology.

[Multimedia]

Originally Posted by GanleyBurger

I just sold my early 2006 Core Duo Imac. Even with the 2.0 Dual Intel chip, it was slow... and it had two gigs of ram and the 256 graphics card. I know it sounds crazy , but Core Duo was hardly "zippy" at all. I, too, would love to buy a new or refurb system now with Core 2 Duo, but with the release of the newest OS X, I am afraid that it is really going to only perform greatly on the newest technology.

I don't believe that. I think Leopard will perform very well on G4 and G5 PPC Macs as well. The base of PPC Macs is still the dominant part of Apple's base. Of course the newest Intel hardware will be the fastest. But I don't think Leopard will be a disappointment to anyone with an older PPC Mac as well.

[Telp]

We all knew it wasn't true, but reasurrance is nice !

[GanleyBurger]

Originally Posted by Multimedia

I don't believe that. I think Leopard will perform very well on G4 and G5 PPC Macs as well. The base of PPC Macs is still the dominant part of Apple's base. Of course the newest Intel hardware will be the fastest. But I don't think Leopard will be a disappointment to anyone with an older PPC Mac as well.

I agree that G4s and G5s will do well with it. It just seems that the Intel chips, which should be lightning fast, are operating more like the PCs they originated in. Vista wants a ton of memory to run. It now seems that because Macs are Intel based they are beginning to require the "want more eye candy, get faster chips & memory" approach.

[MadDoc]

Originally Posted by inkhead

If Apple ships Leopard at WWDC, I'm switching to Ubuntu for good. As a premier developer the builds have been nothing short of disgusting. The amount of data from Apple sucks, and the feature set is less than impressive. And with coreanimation so many useful GUI eyecandy (that actually improves user experience can be done) that hasn't been... The UI needs an overhaul and lots of Apple slickness. Even Ubuntu with XGL finally shows how useful fantastic eyecandy can be, it makes OS X feel boring.

And I'm a die hard mac fanatic. Leopard is shaping up to be a boring update.

If it's shipping in June it's the 30th, because nothing is more of a slap in the face to DEVELOPERS than to release Leopard at WWDC. WWDC is all about learning to write your apps to take advantage of Leopard. If I'm not giving anytime to take advantage of new features, then I don't want to developer for a company who values it's developers like garabage

The finder is trash, even in Leopard networks hasn't been fixed. I can go to the command line, mount network volumes and browse them instantly, but try that in the finder and it goes beachball city. Disgusting. Windows XP is better at browsing network shares, and Vista is damn good at it. I can browse Apple's own shares faster on a $700 dell notebook with Vista, while my Mac Pro tower, and MacBook Pro beach ball the whole way through. Apple fix the ****ing finder.

Mate, pick your toys up and put them back in the pram. Talk about melodrama

Ubuntu is not the be all and end all of OSs (I have been using it for ages) and has far more glitches than OS X. As for eye candy - who gives a s**t. I would like to see an update to the UI but it is not really necessary - M$ have done just that with Vista as a way of masking that it's still a dated OS under the hood.

Leopard will be released (or at least the shipping date will be) at WWDC. Period. There is absolutely no chance of it happening earlier. Apple have told us Spring. June is in Spring. The invites they sent out are Leopard themed. Look how much pre-warning they have given for WWDC (I know it's an annual thing but the invites went out months ago). Do you honestly think Apple are going to squeeze in a rushed event just for Leopard? No, they aren't. Why bother? WWDC is the perfect event for it.

As for all this cloak and dagger stuff from Apple regarding secret features - this is Apple for goodness sake - IT IS WHAT THEY DO. I suspect we will see 2, 3, maybe 4 new apps (God knows what) that have been fully tested internally (just like iTunes, Mail, Pages, Keynote, Safari were).

We will see a new Finder. Trust me

*rant off*

MadDoc,

[GanleyBurger]

Originally Posted by MadDoc

As for eye candy - who gives a s**t. ,

I sure don't... I wish that Mac would remember that speed is king... that people want the 8 cores for speed... new chips for speed.. better memory technology for higher speeds... but everyone keeps making more apps with "eye candy" to slow down the new technology. My son's 1995 HP with a Pentium II and like no memory and windows 98 is so lightning fast, it's sick... I'm not kidding.

I wish Mac would offer a version of OS X with all of the bells, whistles and eye-candy as an optional setting... and I don't mean just turning off the animations in the dock.

[iAlan]

Originally Posted by diamond3

Woohooo!

Totall agree!

I think (hope?) Apple has a few things up there sleeve and we will see a slew of software and product announcements between now and WWDC

- the 'Final Cut' package/s
- Leopard
- iLife - including major revamp and spreadsheeting (and no more 'year' included in the title) to take advantage of Leopard enhancements
- new DVD Studio Pro (to take advantage of Leopard enhancements)
- new MacPro's
- new midrange headless Mac (somewhere between a Mac mini and a MacPro - could be an iMac-equivaent without a built in screen)
- fullscreen iPod - which will need some new Leopard capability for full functionality
- iPhone (as we know!)
- and something we haven't really thoufg of as yet...a new QuickTake?

[iMacZealot]

This may sound silly, but I think Leopard will have the "matte" interface found in iTunes 7. If you switch from the classic Aqua appearance to Graphite and whip out the ol' Digital Color Meter, you'll find that the in the top right are the same colors used in the scrollers of iTunes 7. I wouldn't think this change would cause very many 3rd party software issues because software doesn't really care what the scrollers or buttons really look like... it's not like they'll be a different shape....

[Eidorian]

Originally Posted by Multimedia

They're gonna reveal it April 15. But I doubt it'll ship before Leopard does. Same thing for the 8 core Mac Pro. We'll need Leopard to properly manage all those cores. Tiger doesn't have that intelligence built into it.

I believe OS X can handle at least up to 8 processors currently

Originally Posted by Multimedia

I don't believe that. I think Leopard will perform very well on G4 and G5 PPC Macs as well. The base of PPC Macs is still the dominant part of Apple's base. Of course the newest Intel hardware will be the fastest. But I don't think Leopard will be a disappointment to anyone with an older PPC Mac as well.

Quartz Extreme and Core Image will be the deal breaker for me on older hardware.

[iMikeT]

It was only a matter of time when Apple would respond to this.

[Multimedia]

Originally Posted by Eidorian

I believe OS X can handle at least up to 8 processors currently

Quartz Extreme and Core Image will be the deal breaker for me on older hardware.

Yes, I know. But the way it "handles" 8 cores is not as sophisticated as the ways Leopard will.

I agree it will be a bummer to miss all the new stuff that will be in Intel Only Macs. After all, Apple is interested in selling computers too.