Apple Seeds Mac OS X 10.6.7 Build 10J846 to Developers

[MacRumors]

As noted by 9 to 5 Mac, Apple has seeded a new version of Mac OS X 10.6.7, known as Build 10J846, to developers. The updated build comes just days after the initial seed of the next maintenance version of Mac OS X Snow Leopard.

While the update has grown in size by nearly 35 MB since last week, we've yet to hear about any new areas of focus beyond those included in the initial build: AirPort, Bonjour, SMB, and Graphics Drivers.

Article Link: Apple Seeds Mac OS X 10.6.7 Build 10J846 to Developers

 

[Sky Blue]

Last update before 10.7?

 

[fivenotrump]

Last update before 10.7?

Very unlikely

 

[GeekLawyer]

Last update before 10.7?

I don't know. 10.7 hasn't even entered a developer preview, and probably won't until summer at WWDC. I think the Snowy Leopard has another couple of points of development.

 

[AnonMac50]

I'm not sure at Lion not being seeded till WWDC. That would be kinda late, wouldn't it? I'm guessing 10.6.7 or 10.6.8 is the last update…

Not going higher than 10.6.9.

 

[thobie]

Any hidden signs of new MacBooks?

 

[asdf542]

Last update before 10.7?

IIRC, the last Leopard update (10.5.8) was released the same month that Snow Leopard was released so I think we'll have at least one more update to Snow Leopard after this before Lion is on shelves.

 

[nicroma]

IIRC, the last Leopard update (10.5.8) was released the same month that Snow Leopard was released so I think we'll have at least one more update to Snow Leopard after this before Lion is on shelves.

That shouldn't be any kind of measurement. IIRC Tiger was up to 10.4.10 before Leopard was released.

 

[Vulpinemac]

Any hidden signs of new MacBooks?

Not likely. I don't expect any significant changes until after Lion.

 

[res1233]

That shouldn't be any kind of measurement. IIRC Tiger was up to 10.4.10 before Leopard was released.

Tiger lasted much longer because of the intel switch. It got up to 10.4.11

 

[MacsRgr8]

I don't know. 10.7 hasn't even entered a developer preview, and probably won't until summer at WWDC. I think the Snowy Leopard has another couple of points of development.

I wonder if the OS X Lion beta stage can be so short. 10.7 still is expected this summer ("Mac OS X Lion arrives in summer 2011"), giving it only 8 months absolute max time of developer previewness (nice word, eh? ) if the DP1 came out this week.

 

[0815]

What did they change for the AppStore ? - there must be something new if developers are asked to put a focus on it .....

 

[asdf542]

That shouldn't be any kind of measurement. IIRC Tiger was up to 10.4.10 before Leopard was released.

Uhh, why not and what the hell does Tiger being at 10.4.10 before Leopard was released counter anything I said?

I said at the least not at the most.

 

[iBug2]

I wonder if the OS X Lion beta stage can be so short. 10.7 still is expected this summer ("Mac OS X Lion arrives in summer 2011"), giving it only 8 months absolute max time of developer previewness (nice word, eh? ) if the DP1 came out this week.

I'm just guessing here but since Lion will probably change less, under the hood, and may not offer as many new API's as SL did, it might have a shorter developer phase. They can seed the first build before WWDC, and release it at the end of August like they did with SL.

 

[LeeTom]

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_2_1 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/533.17.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.0.2 Mobile/8C148a Safari/6533.18.5)

I think this means that MacBook and/or MacBook Pro updates are near. Apple seems to be doing less of the special builds for new hardware (perhaps - and hopefully - to keep Mac IT setups easier by not requiring multiple custom enterprise OS images).
My guess is that there are clues to new Sandy Bridge hardware in there somewhere.

 

[Richard1028]

Not excited.

The Mac OS has plateaued. No more ground-breaking innovations on the horizon IMO. There's only so much you can do with the human interface.

Give me scalable fonts and call it good.

 

[Kar98]

Last update before 10.7?

Why would you even think that?

 

[0815]

The Mac OS has plateaued. No more ground-breaking innovations on the horizon IMO. There's only so much you can do with the human interface.

Give me scalable fonts and call it good.

really? 10.7 forever? Don't think so.

 

[KPOM]

My guess is that there are clues to new Sandy Bridge hardware in there somewhere.

If graphics drivers are a key focus, that would seem to be a hint that Sandy Bridge support is hidden in there somewhere. Even if the MacBook Pros will continue to use discrete GPUs, they will be able to make better use of the Sandy Bridge IGP than the Arrandale IGP.

 

[nicroma]

Uhh, why not and what the hell does Tiger being at 10.4.10 before Leopard was released counter anything I said?

I said at the least not at the most.

It doesn't counter... I was agreeing with you. Chill.

 

[res1233]

If graphics drivers are a key focus, that would seem to be a hint that Sandy Bridge support is hidden in there somewhere. Even if the MacBook Pros will continue to use discrete GPUs, they will be able to make better use of the Sandy Bridge IGP than the Arrandale IGP.

It's a hint at nothing. Graphics drivers have been in the notes for ages. It does prove that apple knows they need improvement though, which is good.

 

[Mr. Retrofire]

I wonder if the OS X Lion beta stage can be so short.

The Developer Preview should arrive in summer 2011. After that i think we will see a final version of Lion before december 2011 (october/november).

Btw, if i look at these update sizes (and at the Mac App Store), i think LZMA will be the new internal compression method for .pkg (XAR) files under Mac OS X Lion. ZLIB and BZIP2 are a bit inefficient.

 

[Mr. Retrofire]

What did they change for the AppStore ? - there must be something new if developers are asked to put a focus on it .....

The Mac App Store is pretty new, so it needs a lot of development work.

 

[kingtj]

Disagree ....

(Although you're right that scalable fonts would be REALLY nice to finally get in an OS, 100% working and backward compatible with existing apps.)

Off-hand, I can think of PLENTY of things that OS X could offer in the future to vastly improve the operating system!

A few quick examples off the top of my head?

1. Improve the look/feel and feature-set of the Address Book and Mail apps! Address Book looks like a bare-bones skeleton of an app ... not anything Mac-worthy at all! Plus, not all of the fields you can put in there sync cleanly to equivalent fields supported by other manufacturers' cellphones or devices. It'd be nice to at least indicate which of these fields were not necessarily "transportable" by color coding them differently or something.

2. Improve networking with other operating systems. Even in the very latest revision of Snow Leopard, my friend recently encountered bugs mounting NFS shares from Linux machines using the feature Apple moved into "Disk Utility". (It used to work fine in Leopard, the old way they handled it.)

3. Give up the ridiculous idea that windows should only resize from the bottom right-hand corners! Nobody I know has ever given a sensible argument for how that can possibly improve the user experience. When I need a window resized, I want to be able to grab it from ANY corner that's most convenient and have it respond the way I'd intuitively expect. Why artificially restrict it?

4. MANY file management tasks could be made easier if OS X got creative, offering new tools for them! For example, did you ever want to rename a whole list of files in a directory so they all started with a certain prefix, or maybe move/copy all files in a folder starting with certain letters (or ending with a certain extension)? Right now, I see no good way to do it in the Finder. I guess you could write a whole Applescript or Automator script to accomplish it, but that seems like way more work than it's worth - for something you probably won't need to do again the exact same way in the future. Heck, in good old MS-DOS on the PC, decades ago, you could do much of this with a simple command line! Like "MOVE *.TXT C:\MYTEXT" to move all files with a .TXT extension to that folder.

The Mac OS has plateaued. No more ground-breaking innovations on the horizon IMO. There's only so much you can do with the human interface.

Give me scalable fonts and call it good.

 

[Richard1028]

All of these are fine and dandy but NOT what I'd consider "innovations". They're improvements at best or simply things OSX should have to begin with (e.g., file management).

Again, you have a mouse and keyboard. Not many more ways to interact with OSX than has already been established. The rest is eye candy.

(Although you're right that scalable fonts would be REALLY nice to finally get in an OS, 100% working and backward compatible with existing apps.)

Off-hand, I can think of PLENTY of things that OS X could offer in the future to vastly improve the operating system!

A few quick examples off the top of my head?

1. Improve the look/feel and feature-set of the Address Book and Mail apps! Address Book looks like a bare-bones skeleton of an app ... not anything Mac-worthy at all! Plus, not all of the fields you can put in there sync cleanly to equivalent fields supported by other manufacturers' cellphones or devices. It'd be nice to at least indicate which of these fields were not necessarily "transportable" by color coding them differently or something.

2. Improve networking with other operating systems. Even in the very latest revision of Snow Leopard, my friend recently encountered bugs mounting NFS shares from Linux machines using the feature Apple moved into "Disk Utility". (It used to work fine in Leopard, the old way they handled it.)

3. Give up the ridiculous idea that windows should only resize from the bottom right-hand corners! Nobody I know has ever given a sensible argument for how that can possibly improve the user experience. When I need a window resized, I want to be able to grab it from ANY corner that's most convenient and have it respond the way I'd intuitively expect. Why artificially restrict it?

4. MANY file management tasks could be made easier if OS X got creative, offering new tools for them! For example, did you ever want to rename a whole list of files in a directory so they all started with a certain prefix, or maybe move/copy all files in a folder starting with certain letters (or ending with a certain extension)? Right now, I see no good way to do it in the Finder. I guess you could write a whole Applescript or Automator script to accomplish it, but that seems like way more work than it's worth - for something you probably won't need to do again the exact same way in the future. Heck, in good old MS-DOS on the PC, decades ago, you could do much of this with a simple command line! Like "MOVE *.TXT C:\MYTEXT" to move all files with a .TXT extension to that folder.