Mac OS X 10.5.6 (9G21) Seed Notes Out

Earlier this week, we reported that Apple's developers were seeded new builds of Mac OS X 10.6 and Mac OS X 10.5.6 to test thoroughly, while some devs also reported receiving a new build of the iPhone SDK. Now, thanks to the well-connected folks at World of Apple, we can gaze at the seed notes for Mac OS X 10.5.6, the upcoming maintenance and security update to Leopard.

Mac OS X 10.5.6 Build 9G21 was seeded to developers packing "the usual laundry list of bug fixes and improvements across a variety of services," MacRumors reported earlier this week. The update appeared to move the notebook trackpad preferences into its own preference pane in the control panel, "just like on new laptops," according to the same source. One of the features emphasized by Steve Jobs at Apple's recent notebook event was four-finger multi-touch gestures. According to the release notes for Mac OS X 10.5.6 build 9G21, the update doesn't bring said gestures to Apple's older laptops that support multi-touch gestures. Also, the seed notes reveal a known issue with automatic MobileMe syncing between machines running 10.5.5 and the new OS X build. The rest is history, as they say...

Mac OS X 10.5.6 seed notes (areas of change include highlights only):

Known Issues

Automatic MobileMe syncing between Macs running 10.5.5 and 10.5.6 will not work; however, manual syncing works as expected.

Focus Areas

AddressBook

AppKit

AppleHWRaidUtility

ApplicationFirewall

AppleWWANSupport

ATS

Automator

Bom

BootCache

Calculator

CFNetwork

Chess

CoreAudio

CoreFoundation

CoreGraphics

CoreServices

CoreTypes

DVDPlayback

Finder

Foundation

gnutar

GraphicsDrivers/OpenGL

HIToolbox

iCal

iChat

ImageCapture

Installation & Setup

IOSerialFamily

IOStorageFamily

Keyboard & Mouse

KeychainAccess

KeychainScripting

LoginWindow

Mail

MobileMe

Networking

Network File System

OpenSSH

Parental Controls

PDFKit

Printing

QuartzComposer

QuartzCore

RAWCameraSupport

Safari: HTTP Cookies, HTTP Proxies

SmartCardServices

Spaces

Spotlight Syncing

System Preferences

TimeMachine

TimeZoneData

udf

Video conferencing

webdavfs

xnu

Areas of Change (highlights)

Address books syncing fixes.

New iCal Events and AppleScript applet fix.

Safari and cookies compatibility fixes.

Core Audio performance fixes.

CGDisplayBaseAddress and 64bit binaries compatibility fix.

FSCatalogSearch() on 64-bit binary app now returns correct results.

Keychain Access: Change Password now works for smart cards.

AppleScript/Keychain Scripting now saves passwords as UTF-8.

Access times on FAT32 formatted USB external drive performance fix.

Fixed issue with large file (4GB+) writes to LINUX nfs server when initiated from finder.

NFS export and hostname resolution at startup fix.

Carbon Printing sheets and window flickering issue fix.

X11 application gnubg segmentation fix.

Apple's testing efforts on Mac OS X 10.5.6 are still in their prime time, but the update may never be too far away when it comes to maintenance and performance tweaks.