Apple to release PC version of Leopard in Q3

Stan Beer
Tuesday, 01 April 2008 06:34

Business IT - Technology

Microsoft beware, Apple is set to launch an assault on the world's biggest computer marketplace with plans to release a version of its new Leopard operating system for PCs. According to Apple insiders, the launch is set for sometime in Q3 of this year and a select group of Apple beta testers are reporting stunning results running Leopard across a range of OEM PC hardware.

Since the move of Macintosh computers to the Intel platform was announced in June 2005, followed by the release of Intel Macs, it has been possible to run Windows XP and later Vista natively on Macs using the Bootcamp dual boot facility. What has been left unsaid, however, is that theoretically this is now a two-way street - it is possible with a bit of tweaking by a knowledgeable computer techie to run Mac OS X on a PC, needless to say a practice definitely not sanctioned by Apple.

Since its release on October 26 2007, in stark contrast to Windows Vista released 10 months earlier, Mac OS X version 10.5 (Leopard) has received rave reviews as the best operating system on the planet and Mac sales have boomed. However, questions have been raised by media watchers since the move to Intel as to why Apple should limit its obviously superior operating system to the Mac platform, while ignoring more than 90% of the market which is literally crying out for a viable option to Windows.

Until now, Apple has been characteristically coy in its response. At one session, where Apple was demonstrating a pre-release version of Leopard on newly-released Intel Mac Pro computers, a local technology director responded to a question as to why Leopard will not be available on computers other than Macs with a wry grin saying: "We want our software to work with the hardware."

However, according to a source close to the project, Apple is readying itself for an all out assault on the PC operating system space with a program underway to unseat Microsoft's increasingly tenuous hold on the market.

"Vista has been such a dismal failure that nobody wants to move off Windows XP, Vista SP1 has been a disaster and now Microsoft is talking about some new pie-in-the-sky operating system that will supposedly be released who knows when called Windows 7," said the source.

"Quite frankly, the market is ripe for the picking. Apple now has considerable experience on the Intel platform with both Tiger and Leopard and all the necessary applications and drivers are well-defined and available."