Briefly: 10.4.7, Google player, Conroe notebooks?

Two builds and business days later, Apple has issued new seeds of Mac OS X 10.4.7 Update. Google releases a Universal Binary of its Google Video Player. And are some Taiwan notebook makers planning to build notebooks around Intel's Conroe chip?

Tiger update primed for release

The frequency in which Apple is distributing pre-release builds of Mac OS X 10.4.7 has increased yet again, with the company on Tuesday issuing to its developers Mac OS X 10.4.7 build 8J2124 (Intel) and Mac OS X 10.4.7 build 8J124 (PowerPC), according to reports.

These latest seeds closely follow builds 8J122 and 8J2122, which were seeded over the weekend. Builds 8J123 and 8J2123 were believed to have been distributed to employees on Monday.

While it appears that the Tiger update is now suitable for release, tipsters say Apple remains focused on stability, recently nixing bugs associated with Core Audio and WebCore. Minute issues with QuickDraw and ColorSync were also rectified in the latest builds, they say.

Google Player for Mac

Google today released a Universal Binary of Google Video player for Mac OS X that runs natively on both PowerPC- and Intel-based Macs.

The software allows users to watch videos downloaded from Google's online Video service, browse scenes within a video using thumbnails and skip to anywhere in the video, even if that portion hasn't downloaded yet.

It also features a full screen mode and automatic video download resume function.

Is Intel's Conroe notebook-bound?

Interesting to say the least, often misguided DigiTimes is reporting that "a number of Taiwan notebook makers plan to roll out notebook models using Intel's forthcoming Conroe desktop processors instead of Merom processors."

The shift will reportedly allow notebook makers to enjoy a price difference of over US$50 by using the cheaper Conroe chips. The swap is said to be workable because both chips are designed to be lower powered processor, with Conroe coming with a thermal design power (TDP) of 65W, compared with Merom's 35W.

When paired with Intel's recently announced "Broadwater" 965 chipsets, the Conroe-based notebooks are likely to reach a level of performance similar to Intel's next generation Santa Rosa platform, according to the report.

The Santa Rose platform is scheduled for release in the second quarter of 2007.