Leopard Stars in This Apple Show: UPDATED OS CONTINUES TREND TO ACCOMMODATE MICROSOFT APPLICATIONS

Jun 11, 10:56 AM

Current Headlines: By Troy Wolverton, San Jose Mercury News, Calif.

Jun. 11--Steve Jobs will likely have a few tricks up his sleeve when he takes the stage at the company's developer conference in San Francisco today. But don't expect any big surprises.

Apple has already said the focus of the conference will be on Leopard, the company's forthcoming update to its Macintosh operating system. Jobs is likely to show off some hidden features in the software, analysts say. But anyone expecting the Apple CEO to show off an updated iPod, a revamped computer model or a completely new product line may leave disappointed, they say.

"It can't always be a fashion show. Sometimes it has to be about getting down to business," said Roger Kay, founder and president of Endpoint Technologies, a Wayland, Mass.-based technology consulting firm.

Jobs will be showing off a "feature-complete" version of Leopard at the conference, said Apple spokesman Anuj Nayar. But Nayar declined to say what else Jobs would discuss in his keynote.

Leopard will be the fifth major revision to Apple's OS X software since it debuted in 2001. The software update, expected in October, could prove important to Apple. The company's Macintosh computers have been gaining market share, boosted in large part by the company's switch last year to Intel processors.

"Leopard helps maintain the momentum of that big wave," said Rick Shim, an analyst with market research firm IDC.

At the company's developer conference last year, Jobs showed off some of the new features in Leopard, including a backup program called Time Machine and advanced 3-D animation features.

He kept some of the new features under wraps, but at least some of them may be coming to light.

At a conference last week, for instance, Sun Microsystems CEO Jonathan Schwartz said that Apple will announce at the developer conference that it will incorporate Sun's ZFS file system into OS X.

"We're proud to contribute to the evolution of OS X," Schwartz said at the conference.

There's also been wide speculation that Apple will announce that it built into Leopard a way for Mac users to more easily run applications written for Microsoft Windows.

Last year, the company took a step in that direction, launching a program called Boot Camp that allows users of its new Macs that run on Intel chips to choose at start up whether to run the Mac OS or Windows operating system.

Leopard will take the integration of Windows and the Mac OS beyond those efforts, predicts Rob Enderle, principal analyst with the Enderle Group, a San Jose-based industry research firm.

"One of the big selling aspects of Leopard is the progress they've made toward (making it easy for) the Mac (to) be implemented in a Windows shop," said Enderle.

Another area of discussion has been whether Jobs will announce a way for software developers to write programs for Apple's upcoming iPhone handset, which launches on June 29.

Apple initially said the iPhone would be closed to outside software. However, at the D: All Things Digital conference last month, Jobs said the company was looking into opening it up but trying to address some security concerns first.

"It certainly makes a lot of sense," said Shim. Opening up the iPhone would make OS X "that much more attractive to developers. Now they'll have two platforms that they can write for."

Analysts don't expect Jobs to make any major product announcements. Over the last month, the company updated both its consumer and professional notebook lines, which are its most important computer products and added a new version of its Apple TV set-top box. Meanwhile, Apple typically doesn't update its iPods until the fall, right before the all-important holiday shopping season.

Still Jobs has been known to pull a few rabbits out of his hat.

"I'm not anticipating anything significant, but you never know with them," said Baker.

Contact Troy Wolverton at (408) 920-5021 or twolverton@mercurynews .com.

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