Apple seeds Mac OS X 10.3.3 to developers

Apple continued the further development of Mac OS X 10.3 Panther this week with the first seedings of Mac OS X 10.3.3 build 7F24 and Safari 1.2 build 125.

"Please test against these major areas of changes in this update: Graphics, OpenGL games, USB devices, printing, browsing networks, Cocoa applications," Apple reportedly told developers in the seed notes accompanying the build.

Of the several know issues with this first build, bugs associated with the system's Bluetooth implementation appear to be the most prominent. Additional faults have been discovered with 500Mhz dual processor Power Mac G4 machines and system boot times.

Meanwhile, the latest version of Safari boasts the ability to use the tab key to cycle through form elements and hyperlinks, in addition to sporting a beefed up download manager supporting resuming downloads. The browser update will also deliver improved performance and the ability to view image dimensions, sources said.

Mac OS X 10.3.3 represents the heftiest update to Mac OS X Panther to date, weighing in at just over 75MB. Safari 1.2 amounts to a brief 4MB download, but reportedly requires a machine running Mac OS X 10.3.3.

Additional details on Mac OS X 10.3.3 and Safari 1.2 will be published as they become available.