9to5Mac reports today that “sources with knowledge of the launch plans” are telling them that Apple plans to release its next Mac operating system, OS X 10.9 Mavericks, near the end of October.
This comes despite claims and speculation that Apple will release OS X Mavericks and iOS 7 in tandem this month. iOS 7 is set to ship alongside the iPhone 5S and iPhone 5C later in September. There has also been chatter about Apple holding the iPad iOS 7 release back until October.
The launch of Apple’s two previous OS X versions, OS X Lion and OS X Mountain Lion, Apple released their new OS the day after an earnings call. If they follow this pattern for Mavericks, a second half of October release would be expected.
Apple dropped a seventh preview build of Mavericks to developers earlier this week. That build included performance enhancements, but some features, such as the iCloud Keychain, were still not ready for prime time.
OS X Mavericks will include several new features, including tabs in Finder, an improved Safari, new Maps and iBooks apps, a redesigned Calendar app, compressed memory, and more.
