Three dozen fixes planned for Mac OS X 10.4.11

 By Prince McLean

Published: 02:25 PM EST

Apple this week provided its vast developer community with new pre-release builds of its upcoming Mac OS X 10.4.11 Update, expected to be the company’s final revision to the Tiger operating system ahead of Leopard’s October launch.According to a person familiar with the matter, the new builds — labeled Mac OS X 10.4.11 build 8S2151 (for Intel Macs) and Mac OS X 10.4.11 build 8S151 (for PowerPC Macs) — address a handful known issues, in particular those relating to system hangs when unmounting NFS volumes and copying files over a network.When combined with those from previous seeds, fixes from the latest builds bring the total number of code corrections in Mac OS X 10.4.11 to well over three dozen. Among the other system components that have already seen improvements via previous builds are: WebCore, SearchKit, BlueTooth (enabling/disabling), Networking and Cisco VPN, Directory Services, CoreAudio and m4a files, File Manager and POSIX volumes, and CoreAudio and decoding iTunes Plus files.Of the two separate distributions of Mac OS X 10.4.11 Update, only the Intel version is reportedly hampered by a known issues. A single FireWire bug exists in that version that could prevent drives from mounting, a person familiar with the software has said.

In Delta form, Mac OS X 10.4.11 currently weighs in as 65MB disc image for PowerPC Macs and a 119MB disc image for Intel Macs. The software is expected to see a release sometime this month or early next. 

Apple begins widespread testing of Mac OS X 10.4.11 Update

 By Slash Lane

Published: 01:50 PM ESTApple has seeded the first pre-release builds of its Mac OS X 10.4.11 Tiger Update, asking developers to test the release across the board. People familiar with the software say the first two builds — one for Intel-based Macs (8S2138) and another for PowerPC-based models (8S138) — sports maintenance-related enhancements to over 60 specific system components.Among the most identifiable components are AirPort drivers, Apple Storage drivers, audio codecs, CoreAudio, CoreFoundation, CoreGraphics, CoreTypes, CoreVideo, Dock, FileManager, FlashPlugin, Installer, Networking, PDFKit, QuickDraw, Safari, SystemSoundServer, and WebKit.In releasing the software to developers this week, Apple did not pinpoint enhancements to each component, but simply asked that developers test their new and existing applications thoroughly — especially those that make extensive use of the aforementioned components.What Apple did say, according to those familiar with the software, is that Mac OS X 10.4.11 Update already includes nearly 20 individual bug fixes over the current version of Mac OS X 10.4.10. These include code corrections for CoreAudio when decoding iTunes Plus files, networking with Cisco VPN, enabling/disabling Bluetooth on Macs, and CoreAudio under Safari.As the first builds of Mac OS X 10.4.11 Update slowly makes their way into the hands of Apple’s tens of thousands of developers, the list of bug fixes is expected to grow significantly. Word that Apple was planning to begin widespread testing of Mac OS X 10.4.11 Update first broke on Tuesday.