By Kasper Jade

Published: 07:00 PM EST

With less than 48 hours to go before Apple unleashes its next-generation Leopard operating system, the company is also putting the finishing touches on another update of significance: Mac OS X 10.4.11 -- a final once-over for its soon to be yesteryear Tiger OS.

The Cupertino-based company on Wednesday evening provided its vast developer community with two new pre-release builds of the Tiger maintenance and security update, people familiar with the matter tell AppleInsider.

Labeled Mac OS X Update 10.4.11 (Intel) build 8S2165 and Mac OS X Update 10.4.11 (PowerPC) build 8S165, both builds are said to be void of any known issues. Still, Apple is reportedly asking its developers for a final round of feedback on critical components such as Safari, Automator, Dashboard widgets and Disk Images.

Since issuing pre-release builds 8S161 and 8S2161 nearly two weeks ago, the Mac maker has patched a few widget and Automator anomalies that were common across both the PowerPC and Intel versions. It also corrected an issue that was preventing some popular gaming titles from launching on the PowerPC side.

With the latest builds, the number of bug fixes and code corrections bundled with the impending Mac OS X 10.4.11 Update has risen to six dozen. Pending an unforeseen issues going forward, the release will be the final tidy-up for Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger, which made its inaugural debut back in April of 2005.

Those people familiar with the ongoing development of Mac OS X 10.4.11 Update say a release is expected within close proximity to Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard -- due Friday.

Readers: don't forget to check out AppleInsider's ongoing Road to Leopard Series: System Preferences, Parental Controls and Directory Services, What's new in Mac OS X Leopard Server, Dashboard, Spotlight and the Desktop, Safari 3.0, iCal 3.0, iChat 4.0, Mail 3.0, Time Machine; Spaces, Dock 1.6, Finder 10.5, Dictionary 2.0, and Preview 4.0.