Less than a month after the last seed of Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard (Seed notes) Apple has released another major build. Build 10A286 packs three main important changes. Build 10A286 of Snow Leopard is said to contain a new QuickTime with a “minimal UI”, in addition the Finder has now been replaced with a Cocoa version and finally Safari 4 Beta is now included in the build.

The accompanying notes also pointed towards a major shift to 64-bit, with all developers being encouraged to run Mac OS X Snow Leopard in 64-bit mode.

The unusually short seed notes can be seen below.

New Content

This seed contains some major new changes in the following areas:

QuickTime Player
The new QuickTime Player has a new minimal UI and is focused on playback.

Finder
Finder includes a new Cocoa Desktop, Info Window and Contextual Menu

Safari
Safari 4 beta is included in the seed as the default browser. 

Known Issues

  • Remote Installs over Airport may cause panics (A workaround is to install via Ethernet or DVD.)
  • Booting from the install DVD can take a long time
  • Some settings are not migrated from the previous system when upgrading, including file sharing, sharing name and energy saver settings.
  • Finder issues: Icon previews will not appear on the Desktop, selecting Clean Up does not change icon placement on the Desktop. Sometimes the Finder and Desktop will stop responding to input. A workaround is to restart Finder.
  • iTunes will sometimes lock up when an iPhone is connected. A workaround is to rename or delete ~/Library/Lockdown)
  • Microsoft Office 2004 applications can hang when using the File->Open menu. A workaround is to open the file by opening it in Finder.)
  • On newer MacBook Pros, the screen’s backlight will not come on when booting into the installer if the brightness is set below 6.
  • Hibernation is not working on machines with Nvidia graphics cards and will result in a frozen machine.
  • The Time Machine UI cannot be activated in Finder and Mail in some cases.
  • The linker creates a bad image when the minimum OS target is set to Mac OS X 10.5 and weak external symbols are used. (A workaround is to set Mac OS X 10.4 or 10.6 as the minimum OS target.)
  • Xcode often crashes when navigating in documentation using the navigation buttons.
  • We do not recommended installing this seed on the Nehalem Mac Pros.