Apple has announced that it's delaying the launch of Leopard, the next version of its OSX operating system, until October. That's at least six months after it had been intended to appear; the scheduling of the Worldwide Developers Conference for June had implied that it would launch then.
But no. Seem the iPhone has sucked up resources:
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
Apple runs, as is not widely recognised, very small development teams. Some are as small as one person for quite key developer software, or were a few years ago. (As I know, because I was in contact with that person.)
..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.
Here's the kicker, though:
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.
Translation: it's more important to sell the iPhone on time than Leopard on time. There's more money in selling the iPhone in the future than Leopard. Hitting the schedule with iPhone matters that bit more than hitting the schedule with Leopard.
Does this mean iPhone matters more than the Mac? After the Mac-less Macworld of January (when Apple dropped the "computer" suffix and there was nary a mention of them boxes), Apple's future looks more and more in the things that aren't what used to be thought of as computers. Though of course they are. Just differently shaped.
