There's been a lot of talk about Leopard lately. This is the new version of OS X that will be released shortly for Apple's Macintosh computers. Apple announced months ago that it would be available in October. They just never said what day in October. Well, now it's October and the rumors all point to October 26th as the release date for it. This date makes sense, since it's the last Friday of the month. This gives them as much time as possible to finish it up and get it out to the stores and still make their October deadline.
The problem is that there's been no official word from Apple on any release date, nor has there been any word on the Apple Developer Connection web site as to the availability of any Release Candidates or a Gold Master. I've been a paid member of the ADC Select program for a few months now. I've had access to all the previous betas of Leopard, but I have yet to see the final version show up on their site. If they are going to release it on October 26th (only 17 days from now), they would have to have it out to the CD duplicating companies a couple weeks early, in order to make up the no doubt millions of copies they are going to need at release time.
Isuspect that Apple has already finished Leopard and is just keeping quiet about it as they prepare all the CDs and packaging and ship them out to the stores. I'm not really that surprised that it's not available on the ADC site. I would expect they are purposely withholding it, so that noone can get their hands on it before the release date. I also wouldn't be surprised if they withheld certain features from the betas that will finally show up in the release version. I just hope that if it does release in the stores on October 26th, that they make it available that same day on the ADC site for all us legal developers to download. I did, after all pay to get a legal copy of the final shipping version of Leopard. I want to have it the same day all the other 'paying' people get it in the stores.
I'm debating whether I will buy a copy in the stores on the day it comes out. I have two Macs at home - a MacPro and an old PowerPC based Mac Mini that I use as a server. The ADC membership entitles you to one copy of Leopard. That would be the copy that goes on my MacPro. That little Mini would need it's own copy, so I may just go out and buy a copy anyway for the Mini. Once I get that copy for the Mini, I'll likely just install it on the MacPro and then upgrade the Mini once my 'official' copy arrives. I've even been toying with the idea of buying my brother's Intel based Mac Mini. He wants to upgrade that to a Macbook Pro, and I may be able to use his old Mini as a small home server. Maybe I'll keep the old PowerPC based MacMini as a testbed for testing Universal binaries on the older PowerPC architecture. If I do this, then I'd need to get the more expensive 'family pack' since I'd be buying two copies of Leopard in addition to my 'free' copy. I'm not sure about this though.