Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard heads towards starting gate

Stephen Withers
Monday, 05 March 2007 09:13

Business IT - Technology

Another developer build of Mac OS X 10.5 (code named Leopard) was released last week, bringing Apple steadily closer to the release of the next major version of its operating system.

According to rumour sites AppleInsider and ThinkSecret, the latest build still contains "Dozens of documented known issues" (quoting from ThinkSecret) with key components including the Finder, Spotlight, Safari and iTunes.

We therefore find it difficult to believe that 10.5 really will be released this month as ThinkSecret's sources continue to claim.

There just doesn't seem to be enough time to stamp out the known bugs, fix any new ones reported by developers, and get feedback on a release candidate version by the end of the month.

Secondly, there is normally a manufacturing delay of a few weeks between an operating system's completion and delivery to customers. It takes a non-trivial amount of time to start stamping out those discs and getting them through the supply chain, even if Apple's prepared to sell existing stocks of computers with Mac OS X 10.4 (and hopefully offer buyers a free upgrade to 10.5).

Thirdly, we still haven't seen Mac OS X 10.4.9 - judging by Apple's previous practice, the final update to the current version is a prelude to the release of a new operating system.

But we also need to consider that developer releases serve a dual purpose: not only do they allow Apple to get detailed feedback from a technically sophisticated audience about any flaws in the operating system, they also give developers a chance to prepare their applications for compatibility with, and to take advantage of, the new OS.

It seems inconceivable that Leopard will only contain the feature set included in the developer releases to date. Unless the as-yet-secret additions are completely standalone applications that don't impact on the operating system itself, it's hard to see Apple releasing Leopard without final testing by its developer community.

What we suspect might happen is that by the end of March, Apple will go public on its plans for Leopard's release date - possibly at the Worldwide Developers Conference in June - and just maybe let us in on the 'top secret' features that haven't been previously disclosed.