Windows 7 on October 23rd

According to the latest rumors (fueled by a leak from Acer Pc manufacturer), Microsoft should start shipping its new OS, aka Windows 7, on October 23rd. As they have decided to primarily target mac and its OS, the windows 7 promotion campaign will most likely continue to attack its current favorite targets.
However, we would not be surprised if Apple releases Snow Leopard at a perfect timing to make Windows 7 not so shinning anymore. We expect an official release date to be announced for Snow Leopard during the WWDC in June. We will then know if Apple plans to fire back at Microsoft and its forthcoming OS, or if the new version of Mac OS will keep surfing on its own wave based on new features and performance. Both OS are differents. Windows 7 is released way ahead of roadmap to compensate Vista failure, while Snow Leopard has been maturing for months if not years, being deeply re-written to benefit from the forthcoming technology innovations, GPGPU, massive multicore CPU, etc.
On a pure strategic point of view, both OS will define the sales of hardware in the forthcoming months and year to come. Either Microsoft can revert the tendency initiated with the failure of Vista and regain part of its lost market shares, or Apple and Linux will keep growing, with the next target point for Mac being to reach 15 or 25% of the market share (at least in US).