If you thought the Mac OS X 10.6 news was cool, how about 10.5.4 hitting no later than Apple's WWDC '08 next week? At least this update is a week away from you, while 10.6 (if the rumors are real) is not to come to your Mac until January next year.

Only days away from Apple's annual developers conference and just a week after the release of Mac OS X 10.5.3, Apple is rumored to have the fourth Mac OS X (Leopard) maintenance and security update in the hands of developers as soon as this week. AppleInsider cites "people familiar with the matter" who say it's almost a certainty that the beta will surface before WWDC '08 takes off.

While there are no obvious reasons as to why Apple would want to release another such update for Leopard (how many stability issues are there to address anyway?) it's possible the release could include 3G iPhone-related enhancements and tweaks, as well as software changes that confirm with iPhone firmware 2.0. The much hyped .Mac rebranding is also mentioned as an addition in 10.5.4, while tweaks could also be in order to accommodate a Penryn-based Mac mini, AppleInsider notes. The same source claims to have received word (in September last year) that Apple would leave PowerPC behind a month before the release of Leopard.

Still, an update is definitely in order especially for professional users, even though 10.5.3 was released a mere week ago, fixing over 200 bugs. Mac OS X 10.5.4 will most likely address Mac users' inability to properly save files from InDesign, Photoshop, and other CS3 programs to a location on a remote server, according to recent reports.

MacBook and MacBook Pro users are also accusing issues after downloading and installing 10.5.3, particularly in movie players, but even in Apple's own applications, one of which is iTunes.