AAAAAAAAAGH!!!

Apple announced disappointing news this afternoon that due to efforts to ensure the iPhone would stay on target for a June release, Leopard would be delayed until October.

And right now the Mac community, as is its wont, is in full freak out mode.

“But, but…” stammered the Unofficial Apple Weblog’s Scott McNulty, “If Leopard is delayed, then Leopard is Vista. And if Leopard is Vista, then Apple is Microsoft!

“Aaaaaagh!” McNulty screamed as he hurled himself through the window of his office.

Fortunately, the window was open and McNulty’s office is on the first floor.

But the same reaction is being echoed all across the Mac community tonight.

“Steve! Why have you foresaken us?!” screamed an distraught Gus Mueller of Flying Meat, as he rent his garments. “WHY?!”

“We must have done something wrong,” said the MacUser‘s Dan Moren, his face ashen. “Steve is angry! We must offer sacrifice to appease him!

“Does anyone know any virgins?

“Anyone?

“No? Just one would do. One? C’mon. No one knows one virgin?! Really?”

While Moren scurried off to look for virgins, other members of Mac using community set about gathering up goats and first-born sons to offer to their apparently angry god.

But Scott Bourne of the Apple Phone Show offered another path for the bereaved.

“My brethren,” Bourne said, “Steve hath not forsaken thee. For, lo, he hath delivered unto us this day most joyous news! The iPhone cometh! In June, as has been foretold for lo these several weeks!

“As for Leopard, let he among you who has not missed a deadline cast the first stone.”

As a small stone flew from the gathered crowd outside his San Francisco condo striking him in the forehead, Bourne cried out in pain.

“Owwww!” the MacBreak Weekly panelist said, putting his hands to his head. “Don’t you know a rhetorical challenge when you hear one? Damn it. You weren’t really supposed to… supposed to throw a stone. Owww. That’s gonna… that’s gonna leave a mark! Crimeny.”

As of the posting of this story, a crowd of wailing Mac users has formed outside of Apple’s Cupertino headquarters seemingly intent on sitting there and whining until October.