Affiliate Disclosure
If you buy through our links, we may get a commission. Read our ethics policy.

Mac OS X 10.3.7 to improve graphics, FireWire audio

 

Less than two weeks after releasing Mac OS X 10.3.6, Apple is already circulating builds of a successive update to its Panther OS.

Apple Computer late last week began internally distributing the first builds of Mac OS X 10.3.7 Update, the next maintenance release for the company's Mac OS X 10.3 "Panther" operating system.

According to the usual suspects, the first pre-release builds of Mac OS X 10.3.7 belong to the '7S20x' milestone and arrive in the form of a 15MB Mac OS X image. The software requires approximately 50MB for installation.

While details surrounding these very early builds are scant, sources say Mac OS X 10.3.7 will deliver enhancements to FireWire Audio, OpenGL, CoreGraphics, Multicast DNS, mLAN Audio, CoreFoundation, and AppKit.

The update is also said to include revisions to the Mach Kernel, PDF and PostScript rendering, ATI Radeon graphics drivers (8500, 9700), and Nvidia GeForce graphics drivers (3, 2MX, FX).

Although there have been wide-spread reports that the recently released Mac OS X 10.3.6 Update has re-introduced data loss bugs for users with external Firewire drives, the Mac OS X 10.3.7 Update shows no signs of an immediate fix. Withal, Apple is reportedly working on a solution to this problem, which appears to be affecting FireWire drives based on the Oxford 922 and 911 chipsets.

Mac OS X 10.3.7 is expected to be released by year's end, meanwhile developers should begin receiving builds of the system update sometime in the next few weeks.