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Leopard is the next OS X big cat; to coincide with Longhorn debut

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  • Leopard is the next OS X big cat; to coincide with Longhorn debut

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    The next version of OS X will be codenamed Leopard and released either late 2006 or early 2007 to coincide with the debut of Microsoft's Longhorn.

    OS X 10.5 will be the first upgrade after the first Intel-based Macs start to become available, although a tweaked version of 10.4 is certain to be released beforehand to run natively on the new computers.

    Coming at least 18-20 months after Tiger, Leopard's release will, as Apple promised, break the annual cycle of OS X upgrades. Last year Apple's chief software technology officer Avie Tevanian told a software developers' conference that the releasing of a new version each year is not sustainable.

    Leopard is one of several names Apple could have chosen. Now having picked Panthera pardus and used up Cheetah, Puma, Jaguar, Panther and most recently Tiger, it still has Lynx and Cougar left from the names it trademarked in 2003.

    OS X will be going head-to-head with Longhorn - the next version of Windows - while Apple is promoting the first of what will almost certainly be cheaper and faster Macs.

    Leopard will have to go some if it is to be as successful as Tiger. Apple said that shipments of OS X 10.4 are expected to reach two million this week, making it the company's fastest-selling OS release yet.

    Tiger users make up about 16 per cent of OS X users - of whom, extrapolating from these figures, there must be around 12.5 million. Half of these are using Panther (10.3) and a quarter Jaguar (10.2). The remainder Jobs described as 'laggards' so you wonder what name he reserves for users of OS 9 and earlier versions.

    'The response to Tiger is off the charts,' said CEO Steve Jobs 'Critics are raving, customers are delighted and developers are creating hundreds of widgets and applications that take advantage of Tiger's incredible innovations like Spotlight, Dashboard and Automator.'

    Jobs said that there are now more than a million registered OS X developers who in Tiger's short, six-week lifetime have already produced at least 400 Dashboard widgets, 550 Automator actions and 40 Spotlight plug-ins.
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    If this OS will run on other x86 based computers, then Longhorn will definately get some compeition.
    How'd I get so white and nerdy?
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