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Mac OS X 10.1 not ready until September?

Unlikely to ship at Macworld Expo claim sources

Mac OS X 10.1, codenamed Puma, may not ship later this month at Macworld Expo New York as many Apple watchers are expecting.

However, long-awaited DVD playback functionality is likely to be released during the show, which is set to kick off in two weeks' time.

Sources close to both the OS' development and its beta testers suggest that 10.1 is too far from completion to be released in that timeframe, according to a report over at Think Secret. Once source puts the release date during early September, with the code going Gold Master at the end of August.

That's still within Apple's broad 'summer' OS X coming out party timeframe, but will disappoint Mac users hoping that the Macworld show would host the celebration.

Puma is said to contain not only significant bug fixes, enhancements to the existing codebase and performance improvements, but also a number of major revisions to the OS X user interface and feature-set, including the arrival of Disc Burner and AirPort administration and router tools.

Interface tweaks include semi-circles below Docked applications to show they are running but are not the active application - the active application retains the familiar triangle. The System Prefences panel groups its component settings pages by type: system, hardware, etc. Think Secret has some good screenshots of these features in action.

One shot also shows the Dock arranged vertically. This is already possible with OS X 10.0, but it has to be set through Terminal's command line. Whether Apple has exposed this option through the Dock's preferences panel or is just the set-up employed by a single beta tester isn't yet known.

As for DVD playback, that seems likely to make Macworld Expo through the release of OS X 10.0.5. As one of the key features missing from the OS but present in Mac OS 9 and almost every other PC operating system on the planet, there's some pressure to get this one done. Indeed, at the Mac OS X launch CEO Steve Jobs promised it would be implemented in a few months. It will prove rather embarrassing for Apple if DVD Player for X doesn't ship very soon. ®

Related Link

Think Secret: Puma Details and screenshots

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