Apple Gazette, a heretofore unknown Mac rumors site, claims that Apple will replace Aqua with a new look-and-feel codenamed Illuminous in Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard, scheduled for release sometime in 2007.

The conjecture states that:

What will Illuminous look like? That’s anybody’s guess at this point, but we might be seeing some hints of what Illuminous holds in the recent release of iTunes.

God, I hope this proves to be false. iTunes 7 is the ugliest piece of software Apple has released in a very long time. To be perfectly honest, I think that Panther (excluding the creepy brushed-metal Finder) was really the pinnacle of OS X’s User Experience. I guess the only place to go after that is down. I really hope this is false. I don’t want to make iRooster look like iTunes 7.