Leopard and Podcasting, Two Other Major WWDC 2005 Keynote Announcements

In two other announcements in his WWDC 2005 keynote address, Apple CEO Steve Jobs stated that the next version of Mac OSX would be named Leopard and confirmed Apple's commitment to Podcasting.

Tiger is off to a great start with 2 million copies sold in only 6 weeks, best ever for an OS, he claimed (Apple's press release). According to Steve Jobs, that 2 million is 16 per cent of Apple's Mac OS X user base with 49 per cent using Panther and 25 per cent still using Jaguar. That leaves another 10 per cent using all other versions. Apple expects Tiger (10.4.x) to be at 50 per cent in June of 2006.

If Apple's naming convention for Mac OS X continues, then Leopard is Apple's cat name for Mac OS X 10.5. Steve Jobs mentioned that it is projected to be released at the end of 2006 or in early 2007, mid way in Apple's transition to Intel CPUs and around the projected release time of Microsoft's Longhorn OS. AndSteve Jobs closed his WWDC 2005 keynote with a reference to Leopard:

"The soul of the Mac is its operating system and we're not standing still."

Earlier in his keynote, Steve Jobs covered podcasting, the latest development in audio. Apple plans to take podcasting into the mainstream and support it with the iTunes Music Store. A directory for podcasts will be available at the iTMS in a revamp of iTunes. Apple will support podcasting directly. [Bill Fox]