By Katie Marsal

Published: 06:00 PM EST

Apple this week is preparing to equip its developer community with the first pre-release builds of the next maintenance and security update to its Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard operating system, AppleInsider has learned.

People familiar with the matter say Apple Developer Connection members and other high-profile software makers could receive the first test builds of the software prior to the start of the weekend. The first seedings will almost certainly arrive by the middle of next week, they say.

While details of the release are few and far between, a build train of the upcoming Leopard update will most likely include support for a new wave of Mac notebooks due later this fall. In general, builds should arrive numbered off the 9Fxx build train.

Apple's last update to Leopard -- Mac OS X 10.5.4 -- arrived on June 30th, a little less than one month after developers were first seeded with the software.

That release patched a major glitch with Adobe's Creative Suite 3.0 software and also laid the groundwork for Apple's bug-ridden MobileMe service.