Whilst Summer 2004 might mean around July 2004 to some, to us Southern Hemispherians it means either January 2004 or December 2004. Thus, program release dates given as a season are not very useful for a global audience.
You'd think that a large company such as Microsoft would appreciate small matters such as its geographically-dispersed customers. However, their latest DirectX SDK is described as Microsoft DirectX 9.0 SDK Update (Summer 2004).