Leopard Delay Won’t Affect iPhone

Apple has announced that it is delaying the release of Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard until October. The operating system was expected to be released in June, keeping in-line with prior Apple statements that the operating system would ship by the end of Spring.

Apple cited iPhone in the reason for the delay: “… 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.”

However, Apple stresses that the iPhone won’t be delayed because of this. iPhone’s embedded version of Leopard is complete, and the iPhone will ship in June as previously announced.