Leopard is delayed for 4 months – until October. John Gruber has a good analysis, as does Daniel Jalkut.

A couple of weeks ago I wrote:
Rainer Brockerhoff wrote:

Even so, people who have not seen anything of Leopard beyond some leaked screenshots wrote excitedly about a MacWorld release, then about a March release, then when their wild predictions aren’t confirmed start to moan that “Apple’s been having trouble getting Leopard out” and now, even, that “Leopard had reportedly been delayed until October”. I really hope that Apple will show more details before WWDC, but I won’t be too surprised if they don’t.

The reference was to this DigiTimes story, which I didn’t even want to link to at the time because it sounded so absurd. Well, looks like they got it right, although the excuse for the delay is the iPhone, not Boot Camp. Although this is not stopping some people arguing that one of things apple will do during the extra months is converting Boot Camp into a Parallels-style virtualizer – something I’d previously described as likely to be implemented in firmware, until they took the TPM out of newer Intel Macs.

In retrospect, it’s not too surprising. Unusually, Apple is releasing 3 major products this year – TV, iPhone and Leopard – and all run some form of OS X despite having very different target markets and form factors. (Also unusually for Apple, all 3 were pre-announced.) So far, only the iPhone hasn’t been delayed, and clearly Apple felt that delaying all 3 would be a serious PR loss. Ergo, putting people to work on the iPhone makes some sense, supposing Apple managed to avoid the mythical man-month effect.

It’s still difficult to assess what this means for the upcoming WWDC. Sure, a feature-complete build will be available there, but unless something revolutionary new thing is revealed, it may not have much impact. Launching the iPhone there won’t be a big thing for developers unless a SDK is announced. I won’t be able to go this, so it seems I won’t miss much…