Leopard delayed by Apple iPhone

The demands of the iPhone are delaying Leopard

The next release of Apple's operating system, OS X, is being delayed by four months.

Scheduled to appear in mid-June, the new version of the Mac software, codenamed Leopard before now, will instead be released in October.

A trial, or beta, version, of Leopard will be available in June at the Apple developer conference.

The delay has been caused by the demands of the Apple iPhone which is intended to go on sale in June.

To ensure the iPhone hits its target, Apple has assigned some OS X engineers and quality testers to that project.

In a statement, Apple said the sophisticated software on the iPhone had forced it to make some difficult choices about where to concentrate its development and engineering efforts.

The iPhone was unveiled in January at the Macworld Expo in San Francisco.

Apple said that the features in Leopard will be complete by the time of its Worldwide Developers Conference in June but the final polish on the product would be missing.

"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," said Apple.