Mac OS X Developer Preview 2 Due Next Week!

Since the release of Mac OS X Developer Preview 1 at this year's World Wide Developers Conference, there haven't been too many public advancements to what will turn out to be Apple's next-generation, high-end Operating System. Minor updates were seeded privately over summer and earlier this Fall, but these releases featured only minor under-the-hood adjustments to what was already available.

It's been widely rumored that while Mac OS X is on a sliding timeline and has seen one minor setback after another, the development team is much further along in the overall development cycle and feature set than what many are lead to believe. Apparently, up until today, Apple has only been seeding developers with the core essentials of what is required for Mac OS X development. In other words, interface advancements, new features, the transparent Blue Box and any other surprises have remained behind closed doors at Apple, only to debut with the official release of Mac OS X sometime in early 2000.

In the meantime, extremely reliable sources are now reporting that Apple will begin shipping the much awaited, and promised, Mac OS X Developer Preview 2 to developers beginning on the 8th of November. Essentially, all ADC Members who hold an ADC Software Seed Key will have received their copies by the end of next week.

While information on exactly what enhancements Apple will pack into this second developer release, and which they elect to keep private, is quite vague, a memo sent out to developers reads in part: "This (DR 2) is Apple's second major step towards the release of Mac OS X, our advanced operating system scheduled for early 2000. Since the first release of Mac OS X Developer Preview, distributed at Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference last May, major improvements have been made to all components of the operating system."

Mac OS X will be key to Apple's future ventures into old and new high-end and business markets. The release is also essential to the success of Apple's planned Multiprocessor G4 workstations, code-named "Mystic."