Apple has posted a statement on its website that they will be delaying Leopard till October. There’s no direct link to the statement, so here it is in full:

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, and 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. 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. [Apr 12, 2007]

This delay follows the Apple TV delay earlier this year and adds fuel to the mounting criticism that Apple has now lost its focus in its computer business. However, developers are saying that the delay is to be expected as the latest 10.5 developer seeds have been reported to be extremely buggy. More analysis on News.com.

However, as David Chartier of TUAW says:

On the bright side, this hopefully can be taken as a sign that Apple is still committed to releasing quality software, even if slightly late this time around.

And also this classic quote:

I would rather have it this way than a craptastic release in June that’s full of more holes than swiss cheese.

I for one agree with his assessments. Apple knows that its customers will not stand for anything less than a ‘Boom!‘ worthy product. This looks like I’ll probably be waiting till the end of the year before getting my new Mac, unless Apple gives out coupons for a free upgrade to Leopard for earlier.