Although no date has yet been set, Apple's next version of OS X is scheduled for release sometime in October. According to those involved with the beta testing program, OS X 10.5 Leopard is very close to Final Candidate status and will likely reach Golden Master in the next couple of weeks.
The Insanely Mac forums have some details on the latest build, which still has two known bugs, but appears to be very close to completion. The known bugs are installation problems, according to AppleInsider. The “archive and install” option may fail in some circumstances on some PowerPC systems, and the second bug involves HP printer drivers, which currently need to be installed via Software Update rather than as part of the normal OS installation.
It's also worth noting that Apple recently changed the minimum system requirements for Leopard from a 800MHz PowerPC G4 to a PowerPC G4 867 MHz or faster. It might not seem like much of a bump, but it wipes out a fair number of systems as potential Leopard candidates, including the 800MHz G4 PowerBooks and iBooks, as well as 800MHz iMac G4s, 800MHz eMacs and more.
Other minimum system requirements for Leopard include a DVD drive, built-in FireWire, at least 512MB of RAM and 9GB of hard disk space.
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