Apple denied recent reports claiming Leopard would be delayed to October but the exact release date remains unknown. We should learn more on Leopard's development status in the coming days though, as sources claim a new build is to be seeded to developers very soon.

Speculation on the release date continues

Last week, some reports we deliberately did not corroborate claimed Apple would delay the release of Mac OS X Leopard to as late as October 2007. But Apple has now confirmed to the press and to analysts that its next major operating system will be released on schedule for this Spring.

Jupiter Research's analyst Michael Gartenberg as well as journalists who asked Apple for comments on the report obtained an anwser from Apple late last week.

"Reports coming in that Leopard's delayed until sometime in October. Just spoke with Apple who confirmed the reports are wrong and Leopard is still scheduled to ship in this spring as they previously announced. The rumor mill is wrong again." Gartenberg posted on his blog last Friday.

Gartenberg also reiterates speculation that one of the unannounced features of Leopard is the integration of a virtualization solution. This possibility was first mentioned a year ago in an exclusive MacScoop report but was later denied by Apple. It wouldn't be the first time Apple denies a rumour that finally comes true though.

Another report by ArsTechnica's Jacqui Cheng recently said we shouldn't expect Leopard to be released before June. Cheng bases its prediction on comments gathered from the developer community who has tested the latest builds of the operating system. Though this is a clever way to accurately predict the release of the product, Cheng reckons that he could be wrong as sometimes Apple seeds builds to Apple Developer Connection members with a considerable delay.

Mac OS X Leopard 9A388 build to be seeded?

Meanwhile, sources indicated MacosXrumors that Apple is preparing to seed a new build of Leopard very soon. The build number is said to be "9A388".

No details on this new build yet though but we'll keep you updated as soon as we obtain more information.

The last seeded build of Leopard was numbered "9A377" and was quite criticized for its instability. It raised speculation that Leopard is far from being ready for duplication.

Our guess

To finish, what's MacScoop's guess for the release date of Leopard? Let's stay vague with a time frame: from April to late May ;).