MacNN reports, “Several book listings at Amazon.co.uk may suggest that Mac OS X Lion will ship in late July or early August.”
“Mac OS X Lion For Dummies and Mac OS X Lion All-in-One For Dummies are both allegedly shipping on July 28th, despite the fact that Apple has not set a firm release date for its software,” MacNN reports. “Mac OS X Lion Bible and Teach Yourself Visually Mac OS X Lion are due on July 29th, while Mac OS X Lion Portable Genius is targeted at August 5th, and Mac OS X Lion Simplified is set to arrive August 26th.”
Read more: http://www.macnn.com/articles/11/02/14/fits.with.official.apple.timelines/#ixzz1DxbXagjs
Read more in the full article here.
Ho do authors of these books have access to the OS prior to it being completed?
Most of these books are updates of older books. The authors get developer betas of the OS, and update as necessary, usually a couple new chapters. They set publish dates based upon their own guesstimate of when they think the OS will be official, and how much time they need to get it to the publisher, etc.
There are no developer betas out yet.
Publishers can still plan the dates. And since it is already about six months before the expected release, there must be a pre-release version with the GUI in place. The general development community may not have it, but it would not be too surprising to me if Apple made it available to a small trusted group of such authors, under strict NDA, for the purpose of writing/updating their Mac OS X “manuals.”
Also historically it fits, Prelaunch at WWDC, launch a few weeks later 🙂