Clues point to March OS X Leopard release

Mac fans, put on your Sherlock caps. Despite earlier rumors of an early summer release, it now appears that OS X Leopard is set to be released much earlier than many of us had anticipated. Ars Technica reports that a build of OS 10.4.9 has been seeded to developers and since it doesn't have any known issues, it should be released publicly within the coming days. Obviously, there's nowhere to go after 10.4.9 but 10.5; Ars also reminds us that the release of 10.3.9 was quickly followed by the release of OS X Tiger.

Meanwhile, the folks over at ThinkSecret have a bevy of screenshots from build 9A343 of Leopard, which was seeded to developers last month. According to ThinkSecret, the latest build is a marked improvement over previous releases and offers significant performance gains over previous iterations of OS X. "Think Secret sources continue to peg Leopard's release around the end of March, a date other publications and analysts have also suggested."

For more on Leopard:
- see this Ars Technica article
- and this ThinkSecret article