Apple has seeded a new version of Snow Leopard (Build 10A190) to developers. Seed notes reveal some changes, including Multicore enhancements and partially rewritten Cocoa Finder, but also in areas like Basic reading and editing support for Microsoft Exchange in Mail, iCal and Address Book.

We will be taking a closer look at the seed notes in a different article. For now, let's see what Apple had to say about the new Snow Leopard build.

“Since our first seed of Snow Leopard at WWDC ‘08 we’ve added much to Snow Leopard,” Apple said, according to World of Apple. “Most notably you’ll see changes in areas like:

- Basic reading and editing support for Microsoft Exchange in Mail, iCal and Address Book.

- Multicore enhancements including changes to queue management in Grand Central, syntax changes, and blocks in C++/GDB.

- The Finder is now partially rewritten in Cocoa.

- A simplified install experience.”

Apple also urges developers to pay particular attention to other areas of Snow Leopard, and to report any issues such as “incompataibilities [sic] or usage problems,” in addition to testing their own applications and the updated technologies in Mac OS X.

Prior to the release of build 10A190, Snow Leopard had already been rumored to add a Finder re-written in Cocoa, while other Apple applications accompanying the new builds were also said to be wrapped in the advanced programming language. As noted above, Microsoft Exchange support is greatly enhanced in Snow Leopard, with iCal, Address Book and Mail benefiting considerably from it. Areas of interest include events scheduling, adding contacts to Address Book and automatic Mail configuration.

However, last week's rumor said something of an ImageBoot feature making its way into Snow Leopard. Based on Apple's existing NetBoot technology, the feature would allegedly allow Macs to boot from a remote disc over a network, while users would be able to set up multiple disk images on other disk partitions and even on external hard drives, to be able to selectively boot the image of their choice. The seed notes for Snow Leopard Build 10A190 do not include details on such a feature.