On their Hot News page, Apple published the following official statement:

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.

From a Davidson perspective, we see this as a good thing. The iPhone is a significant venture for Apple, and its first release must go smoothly if the venture is to succeed. Apple must devote whatever resources are required to make that happen.

Mac OS X is, of course, the jewel in Apple's crown, and also requires attention. But Apple continues to update OS X 10.4, which remains a sturdy and functional system with plenty of service left in it. A short delay in the release of the next major revision of the system is acceptable, especially if it means a fewer bugs and more stability. This delay also provides ITS with additional testing time outside the usual summer crunch.

While the delay is certainly disappointing on a personal level to Mac users, it is, from an institutional view, a far better solution than pushing an incomplete, buggy or feature-poor release of Mac OS X out the door "on time."