14 DAY TRIAL // Last week, Apple started polling developers about their experiences with the latest preview builds of Leopard, to see how it measures up to the current release of Tiger. Initial reports on the preview build were less than favorable, and the results of Apple's poll likely reflected this as the company has just delivered a new update that brings many improvements.
The latest Leopard build, Mac OS X Leopard 9A500n comes up as a "recommended" update for all developers running Mac OS X Leopard build 9A499 in Leopard's Software Update. While the release notes of the 505MB update are rather brief, general bug fixes and stability improvements seem to have been the company's main concern. Developers who have already installed it are reporting that it is definitely an improvement, with speed optimizations being immediately noticeable and stability issues being resolved. This is good news, especially since the past several builds offered little improvement in these areas.
At the time the developer poll started, it was noted that Apple doesn't have a lot of time left to make last minute improvements to Leopard, as the system will have to start heading towards manufacturing soon. Despite the short timeframe, Apple seems to have taken a significant step forward, and other updates might still come before the development deadline is met.
Leopard is set to ship in October, after being delayed from its initial release date earlier this year. After the initial delay, Apple can't afford to push Leopard back any longer, and after years of criticizing Microsoft over Vista, the latest version of OS X needs to be as close to perfect as possible. Apple reportedly pulled key resources from Leopard for the iPhone, but now that the iPhone has been launched, it is good to see that Leopard is being worked on and that the company is getting as much polish as it can into it.