Macworld Preview: Expectations High For Leopard UnveilingMacworld Preview: Expectations High For Leopard Unveiling

While there's lots of speculation about upcoming announcements at Macworld Expo, analysts are in agreement that users will get a much better picture of what is coming in Leopard.

Mac OS X 10.5, code named Leopard, is the next commercial release of Apple's operating system, which is slated to ship by this spring.

"You can bet on Leopard," says Bob LeVitus, a technology columnist for the Houston Chronicle and a speaker at Macworld Expo 2007. "You'll definitely see more of it, and maybe even a ship date. They'll be showing off some features that they haven't announced before. ... The timing is right."

At the Apple Worldwide Developers Conference last August, CEO Steve Jobs demonstrated Leopard and unveiled some of its features, like fully native support for 64-bit processing that's compatible with 32-bit applications, a new animation technology called Core Animation, and updates to Apple's Mail and iCal software. Jobs also showed off a new feature called Time Machine, which is a visually driven automatic file backup and recovery system, along with Web Clips, which allows users to display portions of an existing Web page on their desktops in real time -- without seeing any ads on the original page.

Jobs also told the audience, "There are some top-secret features that we're not going to show you right now."

Macworld may be the time to unveil those secrets, according to Apple watchers.

"I will say that they'll introduce those hidden features," says John Welch, a Unix/open source administrator at Kansas City Life Insurance and a Mac industry analyst. "I'll give it that Ivory Soap percentage -- I'm 99.44% sure. It's supposed to be released in the spring. If Jobs is going to do another huge dog-and-pony show about Leopard, this is the place to do it."

Welch, who also is going to be a speaker at Macworld, says he's looking to see some interface changes, along with support for ZFS, a dynamic file system from Sun Micrsosystems.

Richard Shim, a senior research analyst at IDC, says Leopard is looking like a "very impressive" operating system. He's particularly interested in the automated backup system that's already been announced. "They took something mundane, like data backup, and made it seem so appealing," he adds. "It has a great interface. It's something we all need to do but nobody was inclined to do it because it's been clunky and hard to manage. It's very fitting that they've turned something unattractive into something you're compelled to do."

Now Shim is just waiting to see what other features are waiting behind the curtain.

"I'm very curious to see the other features," he says. "That's why I want them to come out with it as soon as they can."