Apple developers to catch Tiger's tale

Apple Computer said Tuesday it will preview Tiger, the next version of Mac OS X, at a developers conference in June.

CEO Steve Jobs plans to show off the new operating system software during a keynote address June 28 to kick off the company's Worldwide Developer Conference in San Francisco.

The Mac maker offered few details, saying only that Jobs will "offer a preview" of Tiger. Apple has thus far said little about the latest cat, which follows other Mac OS X releases that bore code names such as Puma, Jaguar and Panther.

Apple postponed last year's developers conference from May to June so it could preview Panther, the current version of Mac OS X, which went on sale in October.

If Tiger goes on sale this year, it would mark the company's fifth version of Mac OS X in five years. In the same period, Microsoft has released one major version of Windows--XP--along with various updates. Longhorn, the next major release of Windows, is not expected until the middle of 2006, at the earliest.