Rumors galore! Even if the Mac Leopard would have a late 2006 or early 2007 release date, the backfence talks have not stopped. If rumors are to be believed, iChat 4.0 (to be included with the Leopard) will include the capability to call traditional phone lines, which is like existing VoIP big shot Skype and betas from Microsoft and Google.

Apparently, the site who featured this reiterated the rumor recently since their "sources" had gave them an in-depth preview of the Leopard. With regards to the iChat 4.0, if it's able to call a landline or a cell phone, then that's awesome, but if it could only make PC-to-PC calls, then they don't have nothing new to offer to the table because people had been doing that for a long time already.

Aside from the iChat gossip, there is also the rumor about more transparency, dashboard speed improvements, remote control access, tabbed iChat and whiteboarding among many others.

Well, maybe these rumors could be trashed or verified when it will be previewed in the upcoming Worldwide Developers Conference this coming August 7-11, 2006. Until nothing concrete and official is presented or written, then these will remain rumors.