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Apple (Nasdaq: AAPL) Chief Executive Officer Steve Jobs outlined a timeline for his company's next major operating system update to Mac OS X, "Leopard," which the computer industry giant said will be timed to leap with Microsoft's (Nasdaq: MSFT) next-generation Windows system next year into 2007.
Despite all the talk of Apple's big switch from IBM (NYSE: IBM) to Intel (Nasdaq: INTC) processor technology this week, Apple's operating system, dubbed Tiger in its current 10.4 version, has sold nearly 10 million copies, outselling any previous Apple operating system (OS), the computer company said.
Developers are still very much focused on Tiger and did not learn much more about Leopard at this week's Apple developer conference. However, they did hear Jobs say the newest Mac OS X will be released at roughly the same time as Windows Longhorn, which is Microsoft's biggest OS upgrade since Windows XP.
"There's no question Steve Jobs wants to own the bragging rights to the most advanced operating system," Yankee Group senior analyst Laura DiDio told MacNewsWorld. "Presumably, with the next Tiger that comes out with Longhorn, he's going to say again 'we've leaped ahead of them.'"
The Cat's Meow
Apple reportedly has the names Lynx and Cougar left from a list it trademarked two years ago. Even while announcing the company's next big cat this week, Jobs touted the success 
of Tiger, which will soon hit the two million sold mark with sales from retail , maintenance agreements and bundled Mac machines.
Apple said Tiger was its fastest selling OS release ever, and also indicated developer support for the OS was also stretching with more than 400 Dashboard widgets, 550 Automator actions and 40 Spotlight plug-ins from third-party Tiger developers.
"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 in a statement, referring to Tiger's computer search, access and automation script builder technologies.
Hunter or Hunted?
Industry watchers agree that one of the oldest rivalries in the industry may be recast as both Apple and Microsoft bet big on their latest and greatest in the form of Leopard and Longhorn, respectively.
Yankee's DiDio said Apple is likely to repeat its effort to beat Microsoft to innovative features and functionality, such as Spotlight, graphics tools, folder options and more.
"But that's not the point," the analyst added, referring to Apple's estimated share of only 2-4 percent of the operating system market. "It's a Windows world. If they want to change, they have to integrate and interoperate with Windows, which they do very well with Intel chips."
DiDio said while Apple will not allow its operating systems to run on non-Apple hardware, the company is delivering the ability to run Windows natively on Macintosh computers.
"And Apple's not going to do anything to prevent that," she said.
x86 Marks the Spot?
Gartner (NYSE: IT) Research Vice President Martin Reynolds told MacNewsWorld the ability to run on x86 architecture may give Leopard a leg up in performance on machines that would previously have run Microsoft.
"It's going to be interesting to see how [OS X] fares on x86," he said. "It does have a level of security and capability people aren't used to, and it begins to put pressure on Microsoft."
Reynolds added that Apple appears to have prepared well for its switch from IBM to Intel and there have already been x86 versions of Mac OS X for years.
"The way they've built things, it looks like they can move rather smoothly," he said.
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