With the latest series of seeds — no less than three in the past week, culminating in yesterday’s distribution of build 9J50, and with one more possible prior to release — numerous indications have been given that the approximately 450-megabyte update package (or ~780MB “Combo Update”) will be hitting Software Update within the next week or so….possibly as soon as Friday.

Next Monday (4/20) has been mentioned as a possible release date by two separate sources familiar with Mac OS X & “iPhone OS” development at Infinite Loop, but according to these sources — who are generally quite reliable — the timing is now entirely dependent on how long it takes to quash current bugs as well as what if any new ones are submitted by developers in the interim.

Overall, 10.5.7 “Juno” looks very solid, and while performance is largely unchanged from 10.5.6 except in very specific areas (new drivers for many things, improved USB Flash Drive responsiveness/throughput, a few new graphics system components, et cetera)….the list of bug fixes, subtle new features and non-trivial tweaks is stupefyingly long.

Stay tuned to Rumors for all the latest on Mac OS X development (another look at 10.6 “Snow Leopard” is soon to come!)….and don’t forget to Xerces!