Leopard will remain caged for a few more months. In a statement released last week, Apple announced that Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard will not be released until some time in October 2007. The delay is attributed to the company's focus on getting the iPhone ready for its June rollout, which required "borrowing some key software engineering and QA resources from our Mac OS X team," according to the statement. The iPhone reportedly remains on schedule, and those of us who don't live and die by our cell phones are hoping that it pays Leopard back with interest.

The statement notes that Apple planned to release Leopard at the Worldwide Developer Conference (WWDC) in June. Now, a "near final version" will be shown at the conference and given to attendees for last testing before release. It remains to be seen if previously unannounced features will be added to Leopard in time for WWDC; as we wrote in "Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard Previewed at WWDC 2006" (2006-08-07), "Jobs offered overviews of ten new or improved features to be found in Leopard, and coyly referred to other 'top secret' features that weren't going to be shown..." Certainly, the delay provides Apple additional time to implement and test new features, along with those already announced.

For reactions to the news, see "The Mystery of the Leopard Ship Date: Solved" (2007-04-16) and the thoughtful comments in TidBITS Talk.