In March of 2005 Logos Bible Software announced that it was porting its software including the massive Libronix Digital Library to the Macintosh. The original estimated ship date was to be by the end of the year. In fact, signs at the November 2005 ETS and SBL meetings sported the message, "Mac Lovers. It's Here." However, as is often the case when porting Windows software to the Mac, the project proved more daunting than originally thought and so the release date was pushed back to Spring 2006 with the statement, "We're confident that the product will be shipping by the time June 21 rolls around, and we know it will be worth the wait." Fair enough. These things take time, and whoever makes their initial ship date anyway?

Logos has an email list that Mac users can sign up for regarding updates on progress for the Mac version. Since the June 21 deadline is now less than a month away and because I had not heard anything from Logos about the Mac version either by email or on their blog in quite some time, I emailed them last week asking if there was any kind of update or if there was an official ship date yet. I was hoping to hear that the program would still ship by June 21. However, in an email I received from Kathy Burkleo from Logos Support on May 25, not even the ship date of June 21 was confirmed. Burkleo simply stated, "At this time we still do not have a definite release date for the Mac version as it has taken longer to produce than originally anticipated." Wow.

In an attempt to get clarification about the June 21 deadline, I emailed Burkleo back asking, "Last I heard, it was going to be in the Spring. Is this no longer a a target date (as we're a month away from summer)?" She responded simply with "Again, we have not been advised of a release date since it is taking longer than originally anticipated to produce the program."

The fact that Logos has been extremely silent about the Mac version in the last few weeks and Burkleo's inability to even confirm the release deadline leads me to believe that we may be waiting longer than June 21. If this date was still a realistic target, I would have thought that Burkleo would have confirmed it.

On one hand, that's okay with me as I'm not waiting on Logos for the use of their Bible software, proper. I've been an Accordance user since 1998 and have no plans to stop using it just because Logos releases its Mac version. However, Logos has an impressive library of electronic texts not available in Accordance. After the announcement of the forthcoming Mac version last year, I purchased a couple of electronic texts from them with their promise that I would be able to run them in the Mac version of Libronix as soon as it was released. I now have about four texts total, but I am forced to run them in the Windows version via VirtualPC which is never a pleasant experience.

Hopefully, Logos will update us soon about their upcoming Mac version.

Update 11 PM: As mentioned in the comments, I have confirmed that according to the Logos Mac page, the product has indeed quietly been postponed until this Fall.

Tags: Logos, Macintosh