iPhone bites Leopard

Apple’s development of the iPhone has caused a delay in the companies’ scheduled release of the forthcoming Leopard operating system (OS), it revealed Thursday.

In a statement on Apple’s website, the company said the iPhone remains “on schedule to ship in late June” but that it has had to transfer some of Leopard’s development team to the iPhone to get the iconic mobile out on schedule.

“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,” the company said.

Steve Jobs’ firm now plans to show developers a near-final release of the Leopard OS at the conference and provide a beta copy to test. Leopard is now expected to ship in October, Apple said.

Tech website Slashdot carried the news on its site Thursday evening which prompted a variety of responses. One said: “I preferred Apple when it was a computer company”, while others bemoaned the shift in priorities for the Cupertino based electronics giant.

Apple, however, believes the shift is necessary: “Life often presents tradeoffs, and in this case we’re sure we’ve made the right ones”, it said.