during July that Mac OS X 10.7, aka Lion, would debut in the next few days or at most, the following week.

Those rumors are now moot.

"We will be launching Lion tomorrow," said Peter Oppenheimer, Apple's CFO, during the early stages of a quarterly earnings call with Wall Street analysts. Oppenheimer did not name a time of day Wednesday for Lion's release.

Previously, Apple had said only that it would ship Lion during July, but had refused to state a specific date.

In an email to submit their programs to the Mac App Store last week, Apple said the upgrade would be available "soon."