Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard delayed until October

Apple has delayed the release of Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard several months from it’s originally scheduled date of June 2007 to October 2007. The statement released by Apple says that the iPhone has distracted the operating system development team, and that the original deadline is no longer obtainable. Rumors are already circulating in the Mac web with some suggesting that Apple has delayed the release to include new features that have yet to be announced. We’re disappointed by the delay, but excited for whatever Apple is working on. Read the press release from Apple below:

The following statement appeared on Apple’s Hot News page today:

Apple Statement

iPhone has already passed several of its required certification tests and is on schedule to ship in late June as planned. We can’t wait until customers get their hands (and fingers) on it and experience what a revolutionary and magical product it is. However, iPhone contains the most sophisticated software ever shipped on a mobile device, and finishing it on time has not come without a price — we had to borrow some key software engineering and QA resources from our Mac OS X team, and as a result we will not be able to release Leopard at our Worldwide Developers Conference in early June as planned. While Leopard’s features will be complete by then, we cannot deliver the quality release that we and our customers expect from us. We now plan to show our developers a near final version of Leopard at the conference, give them a beta copy to take home so they can do their final testing, and ship Leopard in October. We think it will be well worth the wait. Life often presents tradeoffs, and in this case we’re sure we’ve made the right ones. [Apr 12, 2007]

Source: Apple Hot News