Mac OS X Leopard Delayed; Blame the iPhone

Apple announced today that software engineering and QA testing for the upcoming iPhone have caused delays in the release schedule of Mac OS X 10.5, aka Leopard. Apple will not be releasing the final version of its operating system at June's Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) but will wait instead until October. WWDC attendees will get a beta of Leopard.

"Life often presents tradeoffs, and in this case we're sure we've made the right ones," commented Apple in an unusually introspective statement.

This sucks for those who were hoping to save a little money sooner than later by buying a new Mac with Leopard pre-installed. (Previous major Mac OS X releases have cost $129.) But no one likes a buggy OS either.

DigiTimes published a story in March speculating that Apple was delaying the release of Leopard in order to make Boot Camp work with the Windows Vista operating system; however, Apple released a Boot Camp update a few weeks ago that did just that. Boot Camp is Apple's free dual-boot utility for running Windows on the Mac.

And now, Boot Camp users are worried about language in the license agreement that says the beta software will expire upon the release of final software or on September 30.

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