Apple's iPhone delays Leopard until October

Apple today confirmed that the much-anticipated iPhone is on-track to ship in "late June," but said that the development of the consumer device has delayed Mac OS X Leopard until October because the company has devoted more of its resources toward iPhone development. Conceding that it will be unable to meet its original "Spring" timeframe, the Cupertino-based company today released a statement saying that its consumer-oriented mobile phone has already passed several of its required certification tests and is on schedule to ship in "late June", but that the company would not be able to ship its next-generation operating system by June as originally planned.

"We can't wait until customers get their hands (and fingers) on it and experience what a revolutionary and magical product it is," the company said. "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."

The company said that while it plans to have all Leopard features completed by early June, quality control would add a few more months to the development cycle.

"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," the company said on Thursday in an unusual terse statement.

"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."

Filed under: Apple