Obviously ad-hungry TUAW is talking about Mac OS 10.6 being announced and/or previewed in just a few days at this year's WWDC. WTF? This doesn't make any sense -- didn't Jobs talk about longer release cycles? Leopard isn't even nine months old and, if TUAW is accurate, they'd release it in January, when Leopard would only be 15 months old. What is going on? Where are these rumors coming from?

I imagine it comes from the text strings referring to the new operating system version hidden in software updates of late. If 10.6 ditches PowerPC and 32-bit support, as TUAW speculated, Apple could optimize Mac OS X more readily than they do now. But that's a foregone conclusion.

As for the timing issue, perhaps Apple will offer 10.6 as a free or cheap update for 10.5 like they did with 10.1 for 10.0 users. Or, it's all a bunch of overblown rumors. Just keep in mind that Mac rumor speculation is five-nines pointless and you will, indeed, make it through the day without knowing what Apple has up its corporate sleeves.

WWDC has taken the place of MacWorld for Mac announcements this year. After a Macfully disappointing New Year that talked more about phones and television accessories than our favored computer platform, next Monday looms heavy with Mac news.

First and foremost is Leopard, which attendees will be receiving as a door prize. Rumors abound regarding a totally new interface, redesigned Finder, new file default system, and other "top secret" features Apple has kept a lid on since the underwhelming developer release last year.

Alongside other rumors of upgrades to iLife and iWork, redesigned iMacs and Mac Pros, and some less reliable predictions about Windows virtualization, dual hard drives, and dead minis, what do you think is coming? What other top-secret features are coming with Leopard? List your predictions below.

Oh my god! The cat's out of the bag!!! Today during an event, Sun CEO Jonathan Schwartz said that ZFS will be "the" file system in Leopard. This is major news! ArsTechnica's wondering about ZFS for Time Machine is right!

We covered rumors about ZFS support a while ago.

This is really good news, since ZFS addresses modern storage needs arguably a lot better than the nine year old Mac OS Extended, which built on the now twenty-one year old HFS.

I wonder if the slip was intentional, meant to rile up developers even more than they already are for WWDC. If it was a mistake, I wonder if Jobs will challenge Schwartz to a wrestling match or if he'll just yank ZFS out of Leopard entirely and not mention it during WWDC.

According to Engadget, Dell is about to blow Apple out of the water with their new XPS m1330. Here are the specs from the article.

• 13.3-inch screen, configurable with LED backlight! (300cd/m2, or 220 with CCFL backlight)
• Core 2 Duo processor (up to 2.4GHz), Santa Rosa chipset (965PM/GM)
• Up to 4GB DDR2 SDRAM
• 32GB SSD drive or spinning-platter drive options up to 250GB
• Slot-loading dual-layer DVD±RW drive!
• Optional NVIDIA GeForce Go 8400M GS / 128MB
• WWAN option for Verizon, Sprint, or AT&T
• Ethernet, 802.11a, a/g, or n options, Bluetooth option
• Integrated 2 megapixel webcam (VGA only on LED-backlit display)
• HDMI, VGA, 1394, (2) USB 2.0, integrated media reader (MS, SD, xD), dual mini-PCI slots, fingerprint reader
• Dimensions with LED 12.5 x 9.4 x 0.87 - 1.33-inches (318 x 238 x 22.1 - 33.8mm) / with CCFL 12.5 x 9.4 x 0.97 - 1.43-inches (318 x 238 x 24.6 - 36.3mm)
• Weight starts at 4 pounds

There's no release date mentioned in the piece, but one can assume it'll be AWN. And with a name like the XPS m1330, even the Apple faithful will be lining up for this one.

The New York Times is reporting that, after Jobs flirted with the idea during his interview at D5, Apple will release a software development kit for the iPhone at WWDC his year (June 11). This is great, since Apple has been pretty secretive about letting third party developers do apps for the iPhone. I wonder if it will be integrated into Xcode.

If there is an iPhone SDK released, integration with Xcode is a no-brainer. Here's hoping Xcode 3.1 or whatever they drop at WWDC wraps up all of the nagging little mysteries extant since Leopard was (partially) revealed.

AppleInsider is running a story on why they think Apple will be canceling the Mac mini soon. It's been 260-some days since a refresh and Apple didn't even publicize the one upgrade (from 1.25/1.42 to 1.33/1.5 GHz) at all. I would say those of you waiting for the mini to go Core 2 before buying might have a very long wait.

One thing that killed buying momentum was the mini getting more expensive after it went Intel. Configuring a mini and an iMac, each 1.83 GHz models, with 1 GB RAM and a 160 GB hard drive leaves the mini more expensive ($1,152) than the iMac ($1,074). And that's before you add the keyboard, mouse, and monitor to your mini order, each of which the iMac's price includes. The iMac's hard drive is also a lot faster too. Kind of hard to justify a mini with the numbers stacking like that, no?

With rumors swirling of 8-core Macs debuting tomorrow, it's interesting that a lot of Apple's refurbs have gone away - perhaps for repricing tomorrow?

This is almost worth not repeating, but the bit about the refurbs being depleted is interesting and with NAB coming up it makes sense. Intel has recently released new chips and Apple might want to make NAB a software-only event but would like the ability to reference how well Final Cut 6 runs on their new achtweise Mac Pros. Or perhaps it comes down to the new 3D interface in Leopard, and they'll tease us all with news of it on 15 April.

Who knows? This is the Inquirer after all, so I might as well be making this stuff up.

AppleInsider has information about how CS3 will come and how much it will cost. It looks like there are five packages, a DTP standard and premium, a Web standard and premium, and one for DV. Pricing doesn't look too terrible, though I'm curious to see what it's like in American dollars and for education.

OMG! All the rumor sites are saying Leopard will be delayed until either June or October! How can this be, when Apple was supposed to release Leopard tomorrow? Is Intel too much for Apple's engineers? Are they dropping PowerPC or what? How could Apple delay their OS this long?

Here's a link to blog entry about an upcoming Wired article describing how Apple defeated an attempt by MS to steal some OS X code. This is all hearsay from a former disgruntled MS coder. But it's funny how Apple is blamed and MS corporate espionage is ignored.

This lines up with things I heard about MS trying to get Apple to agree to porting Aqua to the NT kernel based on the old Yellow Box code.