The Leopard Roadmap

With all the hype surrounding a little device known as the iPhone, its sometimes easy to forget that Apple actually makes some other stuff too -- including a world-class operating system now currently known as OS X Tiger version 10.4.10. And unless you've come to the Apple fold only for the iPhone, you probably also know that Apple is currently working to bring the next version of its terrific operating system out into the world.

This upcoming version, known as OSX 10.5 (aka Leopard) was one of those things discussed rather thoroughly at the recent World Wide Developer's Conference -- in addition to that other big thing coming out next Friday. And now, thanks to Mac Scoop, there's more information about the future roadmap of Leopard, its upcoming milestones and its eventual release. Among the details, its reveled that Leopard is expected in August to achieve a feature-full build -- where the various features of the OS are "frozen" and finalized with no more to be added.

Next, Leopard will move towards final candidate status in September where developers have stopped including new features into the OS and instead, focus on testing it in various ways. Finally, after four to six weeks of testing, Leopard will then move to Gold Master status to prepare for its expected release date in late October. With all the iPhone talk around the net and at recent Apple events, its nice to hear a little about Apple's other plans. Don't get me wrong, I want an iPhone. But I'm first and foremost an Apple computer user and am glad to see that in the rush to become the king of consumer products, Apple doesn't seem to be forgetting about its millions of loyal customers who were there before it made iPods and iPhones.
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