Leopard Mk 3 inching along

Stephen Withers
Friday, 01 February 2008 10:35

Opinion and Analysis

Despite already having distributed one developer build of Mac OS X 10.5.2 that was free of known issues, Apple has decided that the eagerly awaited Leopard update needs to go around the block once more.

Build 9C27 was released to developers yesterday, again with no known issues. Perhaps issues uncovered by developers in the previous build needed correction?

One theory linked 10.5.2's debut to the arrival of the MacBook Air, but that was proved wrong when the ultra-slim notebook was delivered with 10.5.1 - albeit a version that cannot be installed on other models.

But there was a legitimate reason for people trying. If you already own a copy of 10.5, it would be a lot more convenient to use the 10.5.1 DVD if you needed to reinstall it, rather than starting with 10.5 and then immediately updating to 10.5.1.

Now there is a suggestion that 10.5.2 will coincide with refreshed MacBook Pro models that may appear in coming weeks.

If that does happen, I'd suggest it was just coincidence. There's no particular reason why a minor (minor? 10.5.2 is reportedly now up to half a gig!) OS update should be required to support a new system. As we just saw with the MacBook Air, Apple is quite capable of adding support for new hardware features such as the multi-touch trackpad to an existing OS release.

Yes, I know that I previously suggested 10.5.2 might have been "the gating factor for the release of the MacBook Air and Time Capsule", but that referred to the whole issue of wireless Time Machine backups, not to new hardware in either device.

There wasn't much of a gap between the final developer build of 10.5.1 and its general availability, so I wouldn't be surprised to see 10.5.2 next week. But if it takes a little longer, it takes a little longer. I can cope without the new-look Stacks, and I'm not holding my breath for the Secure Empty Trash bug to be fixed.