14 DAY TRIAL // People familiar with Apple’s Snow Leopard development cycles are telling AppleInsider that a comparison between the latest two beta builds shows very few differences, in what is a clear indication that development is wrapping up.
While January’s Mac OS X 10.6.3 build 10D538 listed just one known issue – “viewing shared photo albums in Front Row may cause Front Row to crash” – build 10D548, seeded to developers at the beginning of this month, has no known issues, and altogether lists very few changes compared with its predecessor. AppleInsider now informs that, “Apple on Friday evening equipped developers with yet another build of its upcoming maintenance and security update for Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard,” noting that the build in question “includes few changes from an earlier build distributed two weeks ago,” citing people familiar with the matter.
According to the site, these people say “Mac OS X 10.6.3 build 10D548 was distributed alongside an enhancement and focus list nearly identical to build 10D538, which made its way to a small subset of developers last month.” Based on information provided by these knowledgeable people, it notes that, “The only distinguishable change [...] was a request by the Mac maker for its developers to add iCal and printing functions to their evaluation efforts, alongside AirPort, QuickTime and graphics drivers.” Indeed, by comparing the seed notes provided by World of Apple last month and then last week, very few changes can be spotted. One of those is also the “known issues” listing, which misses from last week’s build altogether.
In January, presumably the same beta testers reportedly said that the public release of OS X 10.6.3 was around three weeks away. If still accurate, these claims should indicate that Apple will issue the latest Snow Leopard maintenance update as early as this week. Mac OS X 10.6.3 is the third incremental update to Apple’s Snow Leopard operating system, and will act as a maintenance update carrying dozens of tweaks, bug fixes, and plugs for the ever-present security holes.