Apple simultaneously developing several Mac OS X updates
Apple this week continued work on Mac OS X 10.3 Panther and Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger Server, seeding developers with new builds of both operating systems while quietly piecing together the first update to Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger Client.
Mac OS X 10.3 Panther
The Mac maker on Wednesday offered its developers yet another build of the near final Mac OS X 10.3.9, according to various Web and developer reports. One of the latest builds is reportedly labeled Mac OS X 10.3.9 build 7W94.
While sources have described the release of Mac OS X 10.3.9 as 'imminent' since the last week of March, Apple reportedly located a few small bugs in the latter seeds of the 7W8x milestone, prompting the release build 7W90 last Friday.
A similar, and likely final, update to Mac OS X 10.3 Server is also reportedly in the works.
Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger
In other operating system news, Apple continues to develop Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger Server after declaring build 8A428 of Tiger Client "gold master" last Thursday.
According to Web reports, the most recent build of Tiger Server is build 8A420. With the seeding of this build, Apple reportedly disabled the "Portable Home Directories" feature and instead asked developers to focus their testing efforts on Mail, Active Directory, and Access Control lists.
Developers say Apple has also asked that all previously filed bugs be checked against the latest seed, suggestion that the company hopes to declare a build of Tiger Server gold master in the near future.
Meanwhile, sources tell AppleInsider that Apple is also feverishly working on Mac OS X 10.4.1 Tiger, the first maintenance update to the yet unreleased Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger operating system.
One of the latest builds is reportedly labeled Mac OS X 10.4 build 8A432, suggesting Apple picked up development of the 8A4xx milestone immediately after declaring build 8A420 of Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger gold master.
Mac OS X 10.3 Panther
The Mac maker on Wednesday offered its developers yet another build of the near final Mac OS X 10.3.9, according to various Web and developer reports. One of the latest builds is reportedly labeled Mac OS X 10.3.9 build 7W94.
While sources have described the release of Mac OS X 10.3.9 as 'imminent' since the last week of March, Apple reportedly located a few small bugs in the latter seeds of the 7W8x milestone, prompting the release build 7W90 last Friday.
A similar, and likely final, update to Mac OS X 10.3 Server is also reportedly in the works.
Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger
In other operating system news, Apple continues to develop Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger Server after declaring build 8A428 of Tiger Client "gold master" last Thursday.
According to Web reports, the most recent build of Tiger Server is build 8A420. With the seeding of this build, Apple reportedly disabled the "Portable Home Directories" feature and instead asked developers to focus their testing efforts on Mail, Active Directory, and Access Control lists.
Developers say Apple has also asked that all previously filed bugs be checked against the latest seed, suggestion that the company hopes to declare a build of Tiger Server gold master in the near future.
Meanwhile, sources tell AppleInsider that Apple is also feverishly working on Mac OS X 10.4.1 Tiger, the first maintenance update to the yet unreleased Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger operating system.
One of the latest builds is reportedly labeled Mac OS X 10.4 build 8A432, suggesting Apple picked up development of the 8A4xx milestone immediately after declaring build 8A420 of Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger gold master.
Comments
Don't you mean 8A428 in the final sentence?
#2, if in fact the internal builds are at 8A432, then the chances of 8A428 being GM are lookin pretty slim. I don't think Apple has ever started on a 10.x.x w/o upping the letter. it'd be 8Bxxx not 8A4xx. My bet is they found some critical bugs in 428 and are workin their asses off to get 'em fixed before they announce a shipping date. Kinda disappointing, but I'd rather see a solid release than a premature one *cough*Panther*cough*.
Originally posted by Matrix9180
#1, the final build was supposedly 8A428, not 8A420.
#2, if in fact the internal builds are at 8A432, then the chances of 8A428 being GM are lookin pretty slim. I don't think Apple has ever started on a 10.x.x w/o upping the letter. it'd be 8Bxxx not 8A4xx. My bet is they found some critical bugs in 428 and are workin their asses off to get 'em fixed before they announce a shipping date. Kinda disappointing, but I'd rather see a solid release than a premature one *cough*Panther*cough*.
10.1.3 and 10.1.4 were of the same branch (Q).
Originally posted by gorickey
"One of the latest builds is reportedly labeled Mac OS X 10.4 build 8A432, suggesting Apple picked up development of the 8A4xx milestone immediately after declaring build 8A420 of Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger gold master."
Don't you mean 8A428 in the final sentence?
Server and Client don't necessarily have same build codes. There were evidently more things that needed doing in Client than Server.
Originally posted by Kickaha
No Portable Home Directories? Crap. That was the one reason I saw to upgrade the home server.
Maybe it's just disabled in this build, so people can test other things while Apple works on PHD. No sense in enabling it if vital changes are in progress. But they could possibly bring it back once it's working, and still have it ready for the public release.
Originally posted by ZO
Server and Client don't necessarily have same build codes. There were evidently more things that needed doing in Client than Server.
The statement still is not correct in the AI story...it should be corrected.
Originally posted by ZO
Server and Client don't necessarily have same build codes. There were evidently more things that needed doing in Client than Server.
Yeah, but the last sentence was about the client, which was said to have gone gold at 28, not 20.
As for build 32, I agree with another poster. I think if you take into account that they're 4 builds past the supposed GM, plus the non-build number update, plus the fact that the supposed announcement was supposed to happen last week, my guess (and that's all any of this is, just guessing based on 'reports') would be that they're still working on 10.4, forget 10.4.1 for now.
I mean, which rumor are we supposed to believe, the one that the announcement was going to be april 1, the one that it went GM last week (with nary an announcement) and they're already working on 10.4.1.
But, then I'd like to know if they're working feverishly on 10.4.1 and bug fixes, what's the rush to get 10.4 out the door if there's actual problems? I know you can't make it perfect, but Apple has 2 months left on their schedule. The only reason to rush it out is so they can rush out some new hardware. But that's ridiculous, since Apple hasn't rushed out a hardware product in ages.
edit: woops found a news story which shows an internal memo for Windows 2000 shipping with 63,000 bugs!
Originally posted by A@ron
edit: woops found a news story which shows an internal memo for Windows 2000 shipping with 63,000 bugs!
Off-topic rant...
Which is just crazy. I bealive that your should not ship software with that many known bugs. Depends a bit on what you call bugs, but to me a bug is an error that makes the application behave differently that what it was supposed to.
I know any software is shipped with tons of "ToDo"'s, but these are rather missing features and not what I would call a bug.
Of course you cannot test everything, but if your tests reveal 63,000 bugs it is in my view beta software. I'm sure there are heaps of bugs in OS X but its definately not affecting my day-to day use of my computer.
I do realise that sometimes bugs cannot be fixed before the deadline, but I should hope that the develpers then instead of releasing the software with the bug as-is, they would at least disable it so that it wouldn't crash or otherwise cripple your work... Sometimes this isn't possible, though.
//off-topic rant...
I agree thought that this new build probably is a build for os x 10.4.0. Sometimes a release have more than one GM before its stamped as "production ready"..
.:BoeManE:.
Originally posted by Xool
Man, where's that "disable 'buggy' features" checkbox in XCode when you need it?!
Well.. I didn't mean it like that... Rather if you know you have a bug that will affect how the application runs (if it crashes, corrupt its data, or wont let the user complete the task, etc.) it would be better if the developer didn't include this feature in the application at all.
Say your application has a "save to FTP server" option which you know will either crash the application, upload uncomplete data or which wont work for, say, 60% of the users it would be better if this wasn't a feature of the applicatino at all, but a "todo"-item that would be included in future updates to the application.
At least with 63.000 bugs in the software, there must be quite a few bugs like this.
.:BoeManE:.
Get used to it. Bitch about the inconsistencies, but become a Select Member, pay the $500 minimum and just maybe people will shut up about the number issues.
Originally posted by AppleInsider
Meanwhile, sources tell AppleInsider that Apple is also feverishly working on Mac OS X 10.4.1 Tiger, the first maintenance update to the yet unreleased Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger operating system.
One of the latest builds is reportedly labeled Mac OS X 10.4 build 8A432, suggesting Apple picked up development of the 8A4xx milestone immediately after declaring build 8A420 of Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger gold master.
[ View this article at AppleInsider.com ]
This was EXACTLY what I was afraid of in the other threads about this release.
So, we'll buy 10.4, and then shortly after have to download 10.4.1.
This makes no sense. They have until the dev conferance the first week of June to get this out. It takes two weeks to print after GM is declared.
So they have until mid May, at least, to work on this.
Why should we buy a release that they know has bugs that they have to rush to squash? What are they going to do, release the OS and the update at the same time?
This is the worst I've heard since X came out.
Or has Thinksecret and AppleInsider been duped?
What bothers me even more, is all of those new Mac buyers. What are they going to think when this happens?
I don't understand the rush. They can announce at NAB, and state "for delivery in early June". They've done that before.
Jobs has said that this is the biggest release of X since 10.0 itself came out (and that, we are probably all agreed upon, could have waited).
This is going to be compared to Longhorn, and if it needs updating as soon as it's out, it will be the butt of quite a few jokes. Does Apple need that?
We don't KNOW anything, we don't know that Tiger was declared Gold Master, none of us have seen the build, we don't know how many bugs are left, and we don't know that April will see the release of Tiger anyway.
The comments about Windows 2000 carrying tens of thousands of bugs is a little short sighted. Let's face it, obviously none of those were show-stoppers for the vast majority of people, otherwise they would have been fixed. It is impossible to fix every bug before release, otherwise we wouldn't have OS X yet, and we'd be stuck with Windows 2. That's was new releases are for, to fix bugs and add features. The more complex your software the more likely you'll have bugs. In fact within days of the release of Windows XP, there were several critical updates - so it's not a big suprise that Apple might do the same.
In my experience with Apple, their Bug Reporter tool connects directly to developers who really care about the software. Bugs that are show-stoppers are fixed very quickly, and the developers appear grateful they are reported.
So what do we know, we know the latest build released by Apple to developers is very good, according to all accounts, many saying that was ready for primetime. We know that Apple will release by end of June this year. That's it. I'm sure we'd all love to see it earlier, but Steve only knows if we will.
As was mentioned many times before in other posts, if we were still waiting for a perfect bug free release, we wouldn't even have 10.0 yet.
I would imagine that Apple is learning from it's Panther mistake. i.e. this time have the GM and WAIT at least a few weeks before announcing it (so we dont get Firewire fiascos and such). They go through some extra internal testing (along with ADC members) and have a 10.4.1 waiting in the wings of all early adopters and such.
What surprises me is that 8a428 is NOWHERE to be seen on the, uh, back channels. I wonder if this is because of fallout from recent Apple legal activity. Anyway, if its not, nice going Apple, you seem to have contained leaks!