Breaking: Leopard delayed until October, says Apple

Well, it turns out that everyone was wrong, wrong, wrong, and wrong again about Leopard's release date. But not without good cause (Apple lied to us!). Apple put out a statement to the press about ten minutes ago saying that due to their hard work on the iPhone, Leopard will no longer be able to ship in June.

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.

Apple said that the new plan is to give developers a beta copy at WWDC to take home and will showcase Leopard during that week's festivities. The rub?

They plan to ship Leopard in October.

We'll let you recover from that for a moment.

This goes directly against not only most rumors and predictions about Leopard, it goes directly against Apple's own word on the topic. Still "on for spring" as of late March, but as of mid-April, it's pushed to October?

I guess this gives credence to the theory that the iPhone trumps everything else for Apple right now. And the idea that iPhone is running Leopard is out the window. Oh, and the whole "iLife/iWork '07 relying on Leopard features" idea is squashed too. So much for all of that! The good news (if there is any) is that the iPhone is on track for a June launch, "as planned."

The end of Apple's statement tries to make us feel warmer and fuzzier about the decision: "Life often presents tradeoffs, and in this case we're sure we've made the right ones."