Apple plans to release its next Mac operating system, OS X 10.9 Mavericks, at the end of October, according to sources with knowledge of the launch plans.

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.

For the launch of both OS X Lion and OS X Mountain Lion, Apple released the new operating systems the day following an earning results release. Apple traditionally shares its Q4 earnings numbers during the second half of October, so perhaps Apple will release Mavericks the day following its Q4 results announcement…

OS X Mavericks includes several enhancements over the current Mac OS, Mountain Lion, including improved multiple-monitor support, power-user features in Finder, a faster Safari, Maps and iBooks apps, and a redesigned Calendar application.

Mavericks has been in a beta phase since its WWDC announcement in June, and the most recent Developer Preview arrived earlier this week. The latest seed includes several performance enhancements over prior versions of the operating system, and this has been taken as a hint that a public release is closing-in.

The late-October Mavericks release is planned so Apple could focus the majority of its software engineering resources on pushing out iOS 7 alongside the new iPhone hardware over the next couple of weeks.

In addition to the new Mac software, Apple is expected to release a slew of new Macs this fall. This includes updated versions of the Mac Pro, iMac, and MacBook Pro. Perhaps these new Macs will arrive in October alongside (or around) the launch of Mavericks.

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