Nothing fills me with greater joy than watching one company pull the rug out from under its competitor the moment that adversary is about to step into the spotlight. That's exactly what Apple is about to do to Microsoft on the eve of Vista's launch. Now, keep in mind that Apple, or rather Steve Jobs, has stated publically that its next operating system (OSX Leopard) will ship sometime in the second quarter of next year. Microsoft meanwhile will ship Windows Vista to consumers in January. Well guess what? Apple is going to sucker punch Microsoft by launching OSX Leopard early in January at Macworld San Francisco. How do I know this? A few reasons.

• Steve Jobs loves to surprise the industry with his legendary "One more thing" product announcements. And nothing will give him greater pleasure than trumping Redmond by stealing publicity away from Microsoft with a surprise launch of Leopard.
• Apple is running out of dot releases. The latest system update to OSX Tiger is version 10.4.8. Now unless Apple plans on adding further incremental digits onto its builds, I don't see how they can protract one further dot release another 7-9 months.
  


• Apple has recently been turning up the heat on Mac developers in an attempt to cajole them into getting their apps released for Leopard at the earliest possible date. I've received two emails from Apple's Developer Connection program over the last couple weeks that boasted the benefits of supporting Leopard, and encouraging me to learn more about the new OS. This coincides with recent preview builds of Leopard to developers. Coincidence? Maybe.
  

Now, granted I don't have any insider information to confirm my suspicions, but the pieces fit. Just as Apple surpised analysts and the media with a January release of Intel-based Macs early this year, which weren't supposed to ship until Q2 of this year, history will repeat itself again this MacWorld with Leopard.

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