There's been a lot of hype surrounding the Mac OS X Leopard as of late. It was initially expected by industry insiders to ship some time in mid-to-late March. Looks like the mavens struck out this time.

Anonymous Ars Technica tipsters are now pointing to mid-April as the possible launch period of the new OS, but even that is doubtful. According to other unnamed Ars sources, developers are saying "I'd say it's barely beta, not Final or Gold Master."

That could be quite a wait considering that the trend with Apple is that it usually picks up the pace in the final month and a half of the slated timetable then takes a couple of weeks more to manufacture the CDs, DVDs and packaging. This may very well push the Launch date as far as early June if all goes through the worst possible scenario.

Of course, there's a chance that Apple might be putting some of its departments under information blackout, and what the sources are seeing may indeed be the final version. "If what we have now is the final build, I am NOT buying Leopard," retorts one of the sources.

In related news, another Ars tipster revealed that Leopard will not have InputManager plug-ins, which essentially takes away hacks that make Safari plug-ins possible.