Apple's next version of the Mac OS X is reportedly close to being a release candidate, and some analysts believe the company is on track to meet its self-imposed deadline of shipping Leopard next month. Developers received the latest pre-release of the OS, called 9A559, Friday evening, just hours after receiving two minor updates of the previous build 9A527, AppleInsider, a site for Mac enthusiasts, reported. Build 9A559 contained only a couple of known issues, and may be the first of several release candidates, AppleInsider said. The last release candidate graduates to "Gold Master," which is the version that's shipped for duplication and retail packaging. An Apple spokesman on Wednesday confirmed that 9A559 was the latest build, but could not confirm whether it was a release candidate. Leopard's official release number will be Mac OS X 10.5. For Apple to meet its promise of releasing Leopard to consumers sometime in October, the company would have to finish the current testing process within three weeks, and some analysts expect the company to meet the tight schedule.

Now that both Mac OS X and Windows Vista have widgets, or cool little gadgets you can spread around your desktop, ad companies have decided to try their hand at widgets. These ad-widgets would probably be put into a widget that actually does something, such as check facebook/myspace/sports statistics. Whether or not these advertisements would actually do anything would be hard to determine, considering tracking these widgets would be extremely illegal.

Anyone who thought that the new Windows Vista search features were based off of Mac Spotlight will be interested to hear that someone is suing Apple for ripping off their technology. That someone is a small-town company called IP Innovation. IP Innovation, the plaintiff, is alleging that the widespread use of tabs in OS X Tiger is infringing on a patent they've had since 1987. If the lawsuit somehow succeeds, Apple will have to throw $20 million USD at IP Innovation, and then take Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger off the shelves. Apple has no comment on the situation at this time.

Apple today released its fourth security update of the year for the Mac OS X 10.4.9 operating system, with 25 new patches making it to the front this time around. None of the patches are critical, though a few of them do fix flaws that were brought to light during the Month of Apple Bugs. The Security Update 2007-004 can be downloaded from the company's security update page.

Apple's latest version of OS X, known as 'Leopard', has now officially been delayed until October - with Apple's reason being that they've had to borrow some OS X software engineers to work on the iPhone. Although Apple previously denied rumours relating to a Leopard delay, it appears they've now been forced to admit they're behind schedule, albeit for different reasons than first suspected.

Apple Statement

Phone has already passed several of its required certification tests and is on schedule to ship in late June as planned. We can't wait until customers get their hands (and fingers) on it and experience what a revolutionary and magical product it is. However, iPhone contains the most sophisticated software ever shipped on a mobile device, and finishing it on time has not come without a price - we had to borrow some key software engineering and QA resources from our Mac OS X team, and as a result we will not be able to release Leopard at our Worldwide Developers Conference in early June as planned. While Leopard's features will be complete by then, we cannot deliver the quality release that we and our customers expect from us. We now plan to show our developers a near final version of Leopard at the conference, give them a beta copy to take home so they can do their final testing, and ship Leopard in October. We think it will be well worth the wait. Life often presents tradeoffs, and in this case we're sure we've made the right ones.

Despite all the whining over Windows Vista, the next version of Windows, it seems like Windows Vista is doing pretty well for itself. Figuratively speaking, of course. Windows Vista now accounts for 2.04% of all operating systems installed. This is more than double last month's figure, which was .93%. In direct contrast, despite all the pro-Macintosh advertisements and Macintosh "fanboys", Mac OS X has lost .3% of it's market share, and now accounts for 6.08% of all operating systems installed.

In related news, Mozilla Firefox is gaining market momentum. 15.1% of all internet users access it through Mozilla Firefox, while Internet Explorer users account for 78.6% of all internet users. Apple Safari usage dropped to around 4.51%

Apples newest offering - the Apple TV, costs a mere $299 US Dollars with a better graphic card than the Mac Mini and is actually a Intel based PC. Some talented coders have now managed to run the current OS X version on the hardware. There are also clear instructions, if you want to do so yourself.

Although Apple's new Leopard operating system was expected to be released in April, industry sources are indicating that the new OS could be pushed back to October to allow Apple time to improve support for Windows Vista. As strange as it may sound that Apple is building its OS to work with Vista, it needs to be remembered that Apple isn't only interested in selling the OS, it wants to sell Macs as well, which it can do by allowing Windows users to move over to Mac hardware. Because Boot Camp is to be integrated into Leopard, this should allow Windows users to easily install XP, but there are some issues with it that will create problems when installing Vista - if Leopard supports only Windows XP, then the chance of the new OS attracting Windows users to buy an Apple computer will decrease, meaning Apple misses out on sales. So Mac fans will have to wait a little longer for the next OSX.

The latest version of Mac OS X is now 10.4.9, meaning that this update is probably the last before Leopard is released. Apple improves "graphics drivers, Bluetooth, networking, image handling, font management, sync services, Dashboard widgets and Rosetta, Intel-based Macs' PowerPC compatibility mechanism" in this version of Mac OS X. Applications also load faster in this version of Mac OS X. All of the various updates available for Mac OS X can be grabbed here.

Early rumors stated that Apple was going to charge people who own a copy of their latest operating system, Macintosh OS X 10, $5 to run 802.11N technology. Apple will only be charging users $1.99 to run 802.11N compatible hardware. While most people would complain that these costs should have been factored in with the cost of the actual operating system, Apple claims that the "nominal fee" is to ensure that Apple complies with various regulations in the USA.

There was a big surprise at the 23rd Chaos Computer Conference. A masked hacker demonstrated an Xbox 360 running a Linux and Mac OS logo on the console, followed by the phrase "coming soon". He used a copy of the King Kong game and a PCB plugged into a notebook to place the logos of the two operating systems on the Xbox 360. While giving the demonstration, the hacker did not say a single word. You can watch the YouTube videos here and here.

Amazon.com has listed the iLife 2007, a suite of software for the Mac OS X 10 operating system, as "coming soon". Last year's iLife '06 featured iPhoto, iMovie, iDVD, GarageBand and iWeb. This years suite should feature a similar suite, with the updated versions of said programs. Apple will release this suite in single user and family pack versions, with compatibility for both PowerPC and Intel Macintosh computers.