I think Leopard is coming sooner than Spring.

[Mr. Dee]

A lot of persons seem to be disappointed that Leopard is not coming sooner that originally suspected. But, something's a bit fishy here and I think SJ is playing us again.

At the 2005 WWDC, he said, the transition to Intel hardware would not be completed until June 2007 along with applications. But, if you took note of yesterday, it was August 2006, not June 2007, almost a year ahead of schedule.

Could this mean Steve is gonna pull another surprise at MacWorld '07? No one was seriously expecting Intel Macs to be shown and announced at MW '06, but it did happen. So, I believe this is Steve's way of cooking up shock and awe. I think what we can actually expect in the spring is iLife '07 and iWork '07. Or, it could just be iWork '07 in the spring and iLife '07 and Leopard '07 at MacWorld.

 

[yankeefan24]

It could happen. Your points are right. The only problem would be that developers might not have enough time to optimize and such, but apple ignored that before.

 

[yellow]

Nope.

IMO, they started the transition to Intel early because they could see the HUGE drop in sales of computer hardware. After all.. how can you say, we're leaving PPC and going to Intel forever.. and expect people to keep buying PPC with abandon? Hence the rush to the market with MBPs that appear to have had some engineering problems ( ).

OS X releases have followed a pretty regular scehdule of Fall/Spring releases. I really expect Leopard to be released in April 07.

 

[0003838]

I think the idea behind giving a 'spring' deadline gives Apple time to get everything correct and not have to rush. If Steve told the world yesterday that Leopard would be ready to ship before the end of the year and they missed the deadline for what ever reason; how bad would it look for a company often taking the piss out of others for missing deadlines.

It would not shock me if Leopard shipped before spring.

 

[Timepass]

to me spring dead line means any time before june 21 (First day of summer) and knowing how apple runs chance are it going to be pretty close to that day.

 

[jackc]

Yeah, just being conservative there. But I don't see it being available in January, so maybe we'll get it a few weeks earlier than planned.

 

[Tanglewood]

I see Apple being true to its word on this one. If Steve still has features on it that he didn't preview at WWDC he's not going to release it before telling anyone what those features are. With MWSF in January and a spring release window (going by the spring equinox and summer solstice) being March 21~June 21 I don't see an earlier release on the horizon.

Remember Tiger launched on April 29th of last year and I see Leopard doing something similiar since laptops normally get their speed boost around the same time.

 

[bousozoku]

It might ship a couple of weeks before Spring but not much more than that. It seems as though they're really pushing it to show any preview this time.

It would be nice if it would be right instead of early.

 

[_Matt]

Well. The Intel transition is not over yet.

The Xserves don't ship until October/November and some of the most important Mac OS X applications (Office, CS3, etc.) have not been released as universal binaries.

Hardly a complete transition.

As for Leopard...

Jobs will give a full presentation of Leopard including all of its "top secret" features at MWSF '07 and it will ship in late February/early March.