Apple to Unleash Tiger

Apple will offer developers an early look at the next version of Mac OS X at Junes Worldwide Developers Conference in San Francisco, the company has announced.

Apple CEO Steve Jobs will show off the new Mac OS X—Version 10.4—for the first time publicly on June 28 to kick off the five-day event, which has long been a must-see show for Mac developers. The update is code-named Tiger, continuing the cat naming theme of previous OS X releases.

The announcement that Jobs will preview Tiger at WWDC suggests the company may release the final product as early as the fall. Last year, Jobs used his keynote at the conference to give the first public demonstration of OS X 10.3, code-named Panther, which was released in October. If Tiger is released before the end of the year, it will be the fourth major upgrade of OS X since its debut in 2001.

Ron Okamoto, Apple vice president of worldwide developer relations, said that Tiger, like Panther last year, will be a focus of many of the shows 200 conference sessions.

Okamoto declined to give any timetable for when the next Mac OS X version would be released or to provide any details on the types of new features it will include.

“Were seeing a lot of new developers on OS X,” he said. “You combine that with the preview of Tiger and I think this year, like last year, will be a developers conference developers will not want to miss.”

Apple has previously used WWDC to introduce new hardware, too, with last years show marking the debut of the Power Mac G5. Asked about plans at the conference for new hardware, Okamato again declined to comment.

In related news, Apple has issued the latest in a series of security patches for OS X. Security Update 2004-05-03, available through the Software Update preference panel, includes updated versions of AFP Server, IPSec, and CoreFoundation, and is available for both client and server versions of OS X 10.3.

The company has also patched a potential security hole in its QuickTime software, which allowed a malformed movie file to force QuickTime to crash. QuickTime 6.5.1 is also available through Software Update.

Matt Hicks of eWEEK.com contributed to this report.

Editors Note: This story was updated to include comments from Apple officials.

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