Apple, taking a page from the Microsoft playbook, announced this evening the it will [delay shipping][1] its new version of OS X, Leopard, until October. In a press release Apple said that work on the iPhone had caused delays with Leopard. While the company says a beta version of Leopard will be available to developers at the upcoming Developer Conference, the final version will not ship until October.

Rumors of a delay to Leopard surfaced last month, but frankly we dismissed them as unfounded. Looks like we were wrong.

On the brighter side, Apple claims that the iPhone will meet its planned June ship date. 

here's the Apple press release in it's entirety:


>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.

Its good to see the Apple press team hasn't lost its gift for hyperbole.

[1]: http://biz.yahoo.com/prnews/070412/sfth056.html?.v=87 "Apple Statement"