[Visions_of_them]

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Apple yesterday seeded its developers with the first external build of Mac OS X 10.3.4, which carries build number 7H41 and weighs in at approximately 33.6 MB.

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Full article at Apple Insider

[kyle988]

hmm. seeing as how they just released 10.3.3 I dont think this is true.

[Duke_Thomas]

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hmm. seeing as how they just released 10.3.3 I dont think this is true.

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It is true. Besides, what's this "just released" stuff? It's been 38 days since 10.3.3 was released on March 15. Of the point-point upgrades of OS X that were not introduced very quickly to solve major widespread problems with the previous release (that is, excluding 10.3.1 and 10.2.8 6R73), some existing point-point upgrades appeared within 38 days of the previous version (10.0.1, 10.0.2, 10.0.3, 10.1.2, 10.2.1, 10.2.3, 10.2.6, 10.3.2).

[DPG4450Guy]

Um, yeah, it's true. ??
Perhaps a membership to the ADC will make you a happy camper?

[LilmaK]

I can't believe what I read here sometimes....There are actually guys out there keeping track of Apple's software update releases? My goodness...I thought I was a macfreak...Some ridiculous statistics I keep bumping into on these forums....Do you guys work for Apple or something...Some time ago one guy was able to state release dates for processors and laptops lineups etc...FOR A 6YEAR PERIOD. /forums/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/shocked.gif

[Peter]

Give the guy a break. Maybe he read it here too...... OS 10.4 Seed

[griffman]

If you're in the seed program, you receive emails listing new seed releases. Kinda easy to keep up that way /forums/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif. Of course, as a seed participant, you've also agreed to non-disclose the information you receive, which clearly absolutely nobody pays any attention to, given the speed with which seed info hits the net.
-rob.

[PowerBook12]

nice to know im still gettin my money's worth on OS X.

[Duke_Thomas]

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I can't believe what I read here sometimes....There are actually guys out there keeping track of Apple's software update releases?

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I don't know about that, but there are "guys out there" capable of reading and interpreting the results of a Google query. /forums/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/tongue.gif

[Visions_of_them]

Just wondering what does it mean when they say it's been seed'd,
I know you have Beta and Alpha releases, where does Seeding fall in this list as I thought Alpha is a final release, and beta is just looking for problems.
Cheers
Ru

[d00d]

When something is seeded, it has nothing to do with its development cycle status. Alphas, betas, final candidates, and golden masters can all get seeded. Seeding just means that it's been planted with a select few, in this case, developers that are part of Apple's program.
An alpha is NOT a final release. The general classifications are as follows (ususally):
development stage - probably crashes, may not compile, many things missing
alpha stage - frequent crashes, usually compiles, some features missing
beta - infrequent crashes, almost always compiles, nearly all features implemented
final candidate - all features in, no known bugs, testing to find bugs
golden master - final version with (hopefully) no bugs
Of course, these classifications are completely arbitrary and should mean very little to end users. They're most for internal tracking of status.

[Visions_of_them]

Thanks for that dood, informative as ever:)

[griffman]

This conversation was stirring "deja vu all over again" in my fingers, so I did a bit of searching ... and we had a similar discussion right here in January when 10.3.2 came out. Here's what I wrote then about the stages of software development; it's similar to d00d's list, but is more lenient of bugs:

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Alpha, Beta, Golden Master. Alphas are highly unstable and likely to crash every machine they're installed on, they aren't feature-complete, and they probably don't have anything close to a finished user interface. Betas are much closer to production quality; they MAY crash SOME of the machines they are installed on, they are feature complete by defintion, as the beta stage is used for debugging and optimization, not feature additions. Golden Masters are the debugged betas, where all "do not ship until this is fixed" bugs have been fixed, and the remaining bugs have been prioritized for the next upgrade release. There's no such thing as a bug-free release, only a release free of known crashing bugs.

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Once you get the release out the door, you go back to the list of unresolved issues and get working on them for the next release. BTW, if this kind of stuff is interesting to you, you can see the process at work in public on bugzilla.mozilla.org, where bugs are publicly discussed, scheduled, moved, revised, ignored, fixed, etc. Quite interesting (search on "OS X" on the main page to browse some OS X related issues, for example).
-rob.