Apple to Preview ‘Leopard’ at Developer Conference

Apple Computer will provide the first public preview of “Leopard,” the next major version of Mac OS X, when its annual World Wide Developers Conference convenes Aug. 7 in San Francisco.

As usual, Apple CEO Steve Jobs will present the opening WWDC keynote. Joining Jobs will be Phil Schiller, senior vice president of worldwide product marketing; Bertrand Serlet, who was recently promoted to the post of senior vice president of Software Engineering; and Scott Forstall, vice president of Platform Experience.

The annual WWDC conference is open to Mac hardware and software developers and offers five days of closed-to-the-public technical sessions.

In past years, especially as the company scaled back its presence at the summer Macworld Expo in New York City, Apple has used the WWDC keynote to make major announcements, including hardware debuts.

In 2005, Jobs unveiled the company’s move to Intel processors. The previous year, he offered the first public peek at the “Tiger” Mac OS X 10.4 operating system.

There is also speculation that Apple might announce new, Intel-based versions of its professional Power Mac line and Xserve server products, which are the only Mac models that have not yet migrated to Intel processors.

This has been stirred by recent news that Intel’s Woodcrest processor, which is designed for use in servers and perhaps professional workstations, will be released on June 26.

Click here to read the details about Intel’s “Woodcrest” Xeon server processor.

In fact, the wait for Woodcrest may have been behind the move of WWDC to August from its traditional June time frame.

Think Secret, a Mac-centric site that has in the past published insider knowledge of Apple product announcements, has said that the company is “on track” to deliver Woodcrest-based Xserves “around July.”

Read the full story on eWEEK.com: Apple to Preview ‘Leopard’ at Developer Conference

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