New Leopard Seed in Wild

Yesterday Apple released a new seed of Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard available to ADC members via its ADC portal.

The newest seed (9A499) is said to be very unstable but noticeably snappy compared to the previous build (9A466).

The following is a list of known issues that accompany the seed:

  • Any main executables (not dylibs) built for 10.5 (but not 10.4 or earlier) won’t run on Leopard seeds older than the WWDC seed. Older Leopard binaries will still run on this latest seed, but not the other way around.
  • Upgrades from previous releases and archive installs are not working. Please perform a clean install and migrate your settings if needed.
  • Users with ATI graphics cards may see corruption in Terminal when scrolling.
  • Unable to log in after enabling FileVault. Enabling the root user to login should work around this, but FileVault is not recommended in this seed.
  • Non-default AirPort preferences are not fully functional and modifying the Airport settings in the Network Preference Pane may lead to a crash.
  • PowerPC systems with more than 1GB of RAM may experience panics when using AirPort.
  • Users with a NVIDIA GeForce 8600M graphics card may experience graphics related sluggishness, mouse cursor corruption, and possible problems waking a machine from sleep.
  • DirectoryService may hang and cause your system fan to spin or slow down. Workaround is to run “sudo killall DirectoryService” in Terminal.
  • Videos purchased from the iTunes Store will not play in iTunes.
  • Mail hangs when using the Photo Browser.
  • If you migrate your system settings after installing, clicking the items in the Dock may attempt to launch the previous versions which could fail. Workaround is to remove the failing item from your Dock and re-add the latest version.
  • Software Update may crash in certain situations. Create a “/Library/Printers/” directory to work around this.
  • QuickTime for Java is no longer accessible from either unsigned Java applets or from unsigned WebStart applications.
  • Installing Parallels will make your machine unusable. It’s sometimes possible to workaround this by booting into another volume and running “sudo chmod 1775 /Volumes/” in Terminal.
  • Adobe CS2 fails to install if you don’t install any printer drivers.
  • Unable to install Final Cut Studio & Final Cut Pro 6.0.

Apple is said to be on track for a late-October release of Leopard to the public.

Apple Entices ADC Members to Leopard Starter Kit

Apple has sent an email out to ADC members enticing them to sign up for “Premier” or “Select” accounts, both of which now offer exclusive access to Leopard betas.

The ADC accounts also offer members access to the Leopard development centre as well as the ability to view educational videos and lessons on coding.