Apple offers developers new Tiger, Intel pre-releases

Mac OS X 10.4.3 is the next maintenance release scheduled for Apple's Tiger operating system. The latest build of the software is said to be Mac OS X 10.4.3 build 8F24, which ads nearly 75 bugs fixes or improvements to the previously reported 400.

Some recent changes in the software pertain to the continued improvement of .Mac synching, iChat, Spotlight, Automator, AppleScript, Mail, OpenGL, Safari and USB. However, the system update continues to experience .Mac synching issues alongside a few other bugs affecting Pages, printing from Preview.app and Keychain Access.

Separately this weekend, Apple updated its Mac OS X for Intel project for the first time since the company announced that it would be switching to Intel processors in its Macintosh product line.

Developers renting one of Apple's $999 test systems should be able to download Mac OS X 10.4.2 build 8B1072, which brings Mac OS X for Intel up to speed with the latest public release of Mac OS X Tiger.

According to reports, this latest Intel build includes new anti-piracy measures to prevent hackers from running Mac OS X smoothly on Intel-based computers not authorized by Apple.

Software applications — both included with and compiled on build 8B1027 — will not run on the previous Mac OS X for Intel pre-release. This means that all new Universal Binaries will fail to operate with the much hacked and pirated initial pre-release of Mac OS X for Intel.

The first and only prior pre-release build of Mac OS X for Intel made its debut in July in the form of Mac OS X 10.4.1 build 8B1025.