MacUser Rumors: The Top Secret behind Leopard

An unnamed source has revealed the cause behind Apple’s silence surrounding Leopard’s release. Apparently, Apple is rewriting the entire operating system from scratch, using the popular Ruby on Rails web application framework. According to the source, Steve Jobs demanded the switch after seeing the popular screencasts found on the Ruby on Rails website, in which a developer created a blogging application in less than 15 minutes.

Earlier reports have suggested the inclusion of Ruby on Rails in Leopard, but the decision to port the entire operating system to it was apparently a recent one, thus the delayed release, and lack of information coming from Apple. Plans are being made, however, to show off Leopard’s new capabilities at WWDC. Developers can look forward to

• Convention over configuration.
• Xcode has been replaced with TextMate
• CoreAnimation has been replaced by “Sweet AJAX-y effects, everywhere

After getting the news of Apple’s new OS strategy, Microsoft immediately announced that their next version of Windows would be based on its own ASP web framework. Analysts have questioned the judgement of both companies, remarking upon the operating systems’ oft-predicted imminent obsolescence, supposedly to be caused by the increasing popularity of web applications.

“By making the desktop an environment a web environment, Apple and Microsoft are just making the operating system irrelevant” said one popular analyst.

One advantage of the switch, at least for Mac users, will be a marked decrease of the minimum system requirements needed for the upgrade. Since the GUI will essentially be run in the browser, 10.5 will become available to many machines that weren’t even able to run 10.4. Unfortunately, the good news doesn’t carry over to Microsoft users. According to a Microsoft spokesperson, the ASP based version of Windows, code named, “Kilimanjaro,” will require a motherboard swap, to support their new technology, “internet tubes.”