Some of you might remember the music event in September. Not only did Steve Jobs give us new iPods, but he also promised that Apple would be releasing new in-ear headphones in October. If anyone hasn't noticed, it's now mid-November, and there's no sign of the new headphones anywhere.

Has Apple simply abandoned the release of these new headphones? If history repeats itself, then we might get these sometime next year. When I contacted Apple's sales staff, they told me that there is "no set release date." You can check out the In-Ear Headphones store entry by clicking here; someday you might even be able to buy them for $79 US .

Imagine you are a software development company that has been around for 11 years, with award-winning titles for mobile computing devices. You follow the rules, you submit iPhone versions of your applications to the App Store, and yet you still haven't seen your programs make it to the store.

This is the boat that a lot of developers are in, but it is particularly frustrating for Ilium Software. Ilium has sold two well-respected applications -- eWallet and ListPro -- for Palm OS and Windows Mobile devices for years, and has a number of other commercial and free mobile applications on the market.

According to Ilium spokesperson Ellen Craw, eWallet has been "in the queue" at Apple for over two weeks, and they can't get any word from App Store personnel on when their highly anticipated app will actually appear online. The comments in Ilium's blog are particularly revealing, as longtime customers are also frustrated by the black hole at Apple.

Having used Ilium's products before, I'm waiting for both ListPro and eWallet to show up in the store to fill those niches on my iPhone. What other great products are being held up by Apple? We'd love to know!

The interview series with developers on Apple's delay of Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard has gone really well, with great responses from Brent Simmons and Wil Shipley already offering insight into the mind and perspective of a developer. Next up to the plate is Paul Kafasis of Rogue Amoeba, makers of such apps as Fission, AirFoil and Audio Hijack Pro. I never realized that Paul apparently does most of his coding from his beach-side manor (I kid, of course), but I nevertheless was thankful that he took the time out of his day to offer his take on Leopard's delay, backwards compatibility and whether Apple should open up the Apple TV and iPhone to 3rd party goodness. Paul offers some great thoughts on all this and more, along with some choice advise for budding developers. Read on for my interview with Paul Kafasis on whether Leopard's delay changes anything for the state of Apple.

In the first interview of this new mini-series, Brent Simmons of NewsGator / NetNewsWire shared some of his thoughts on Apple's delay of Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard in light of the iPhone. For this second installment, Wil Shipley of Delicious Monster / Delicious Library steps up to the plate on feeling like a new programmer again, a reason to be happy that Leopard was delayed and why the iPhone's release is a great time to work at Delicious Monster. Wil has a great perspective on Apple and their products, and - as anyone who reads his Call Me Fishmeal blog will know - an entertaining way with words. Read on for Wil's responses to my questions after the jump.

Apple's announcement that Leopard has been delayed until October was quite the shocker, especially since we apparently have the iPhone to thank. This of course elicited nearly every response you can think of from every walk of life, but we don't often hear from what I feel is one of the most important building blocks of the Mac OS X community: 3rd party developers. Sure, developers blog about stuff like this on their own, but not everyone is down for sifting through posts about the inner workings of Mac OS X for the insightful opinion pieces on what things like a Leopard delay mean to Apple and its users. And that isn't a bad thing, especially since it inspired me to bring the developers' thoughts to you in an interview series with some of Mac OS X's biggest hitters, including Wil Shipley (co-founder of Omni Group and Delicious Monster), Paul Kafasis (CEO of Rogue Amoeba), Gus Mueller (of Flying Meat software) and Allan Odgaard (of Macromates).

I wanted to get their thoughts on Leopard, the iPhone and where Apple is headed as a company in light of Mac OS X delays and Apple's gadgets which would (or should) make great venues for their products. Thankfully, all the developers responded positively and offered some great insight on these issues. These guys have a unique perspective on the state of Apple and its products, and I'm thankful that they all took the time to lay it down as only a Mac OS X developer can.

First up (only because he was the first to reply) is Brent Simmons of NewsGator fame. Read on for thoughts from the man who brought RSS and blogging to the Mac masses with NetNewsWire and MarsEdit (which was acquired recently by Red Sweater Software).

Apple has just issued a press release statement announcing that Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard has been delayed until October. The reason? iPhone: "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." However, Apple will still be displaying a "feature complete" version of Leopard at June's WWDC event, and will be giving beta versions for developers to take home and help put the finishing touches on.

This is a pretty significant announcement, especially considering that Apple has fallen under criticism as of late for dropping 'Computer' from their name and seemingly shifting their focus from computers to consumer devices such as the iPod, Apple TV and now Mac OS X-delaying iPhone. In a way though, I'm not surprised either, as a number of Mac OS X developers have expressed disbelief that Apple was going to hit a June release with Leopard in its currently buggy and fairly unfinished state.

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. The company could simply have shipped in June and issued 'Service Pack 1' later to patch all the gaping holes their customers found. But that wouldn't be very Apple, would it?

[Update: Still nothing at apple.com/pr, but it has been posted to Apple's Hot News site: http://www.apple.com/hotnews/]

We've seen this before, of course, but today DigiTimes is reporting that Leopard may be as late as October...and it's Vista's fault (kind of).

More of those infamous "reliable sources" are saying that Apple is busy adding Vista support to Leopard's integrated implementation of Boot Camp. The idea is that built-in XP support won't be enough to attract new switchers who want to use Vista.

Of course, this "reliable source" could be someone's Uncle Frank who never leaves the house, but the delay is being covered by a number of outlets. As usual, we leave you with this: Time will tell.

The first bell that rung in my ear when Steve announced Mac OS X 10.5's ship date of Spring 2007 was: "Apple just pulled a Microsoft". I know, I know: those words might be nails on the chalkboard in your head, but it's true. Leopard was originally promised for Fall 2006, and now it's been bumped back to 2007.

Now don't get me wrong, if they need the time to work on it and bang out all the new features (including those secret ones they couldn't even show today) then by all means the company should take their time. I'm simply interested in the ramifications, if any, of a delay like this.

Microsoft has received boatloads of criticism from every media outlet imaginable for continually delaying Longhorn Vista for the last 4 years. Some have postulated that today's modern and feature-packed OSes might be getting too big for their britches. Even those recent prominent un-switchers in the media also cited buggy software and wonky Mac OS X problems as part of their reasoning for jumping ship.

I'm not trying to Pull a Dvorak™ and invent some crisis here or anything, but could some of these complications be making their way into the Apple side of the fence? Each new version of Mac OS X has brought incredible innovation with it (and these 10 new Leopard features are no exception), but also slightly more instability and 'growing pains' as well. Mail.app is widely harped on for a good number of reasons, namely instability and flakiness. GarageBand rocks, but only until you try to use the fancy podcast recording features. Even the cutting-edge new Spotlight is a great concept with a decent implementation, but it too suffers problems of inaccuracy, sluggish performance (even on recent machines like my MBP) and over-activity.

What do you TUAW readers think though? Is the new Leopard ship date cause for alarm? Do you think you'll pick up the 1.0 release, or wait for initial reports and the subsequent updates? Sound off!

[UPDATE: For clarification, many reports since the introduction of Leopard have changed their tune for a release of 'late 2006/early 2007', but plenty of them, at least around the original announcement, specified Fall 2006.]

I almost decided not to post this on the grounds that a lot of us probably won't be surprised, but then I figured it might still be good for a laugh.

A friend passed me an article at CNET which reports that Vista has been delayed yet again to January 2007. Windows chief Jim Allchin explained that a few complications would force some PC vendors to wait until '07 to get their hands on the über-delayed upgrade to Microsoft's OS, while others could have it as soon as November 2006. As a result of this quirk, Microsoft ultimately decided to push the hold button again, kicking Vista's debut into January of 2007.

Here's hoping Apple will capitalize on this latest roadblock in Vista's development. With Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard) still slated to land this year, along with the recent announcements of a new chip from Intel and WWDC's move to August (perhaps for a Leopard release?), I wouldn't be surprised if 2006 turns into a fantastic year for Apple.

[thanks to Damien for the pic]