By Slash Lane

Published: 09:00 AM EST

Apple this weekend followed the release of its latest Snow Leopard beta with new pre-releases of both Mac OS X 10.5.8 Leopard and Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard Server.

Mac OS X 10.5.8 build 9L25

Since opening the Mac OS X 10.5.8 beta test to developers approximately one month ago, Apple has shown signs that the release may cap off development of Mac OS X 10.5.

For example, each new build has arrived with a focus area noticeably distinct from the last, with lower-level technologies and frameworks seeing greater attention than usual. As such, it's been speculated that the Mac maker may be giving its Leopard OS a final once-over.

This trend appears to have culminated with this past weekend's release of build 9L25, which no longer asks that developers focus their attention on a small subset of Leopard's components. Instead, it groups together the more than three dozen components that had been isolated into smaller focus groups in earlier betas.

The latest build also lists no known issues and addresses just two new bugs, one related to saving mail messages as individual message documents and another to URL localization.

Mac OS X 10.6 Server build 10A403

Separately, developers this weekend were also treated to a new build of Mac OS X 10.6 Server, labeled build 10A403. With it, Apple asked that they test upgrade installs of the server software itself, in addition to upgrade installs of Calendar server.

Developers were also reportedly asked to spend some time with the system's new Podcast Producer, evaluating as many third-party video and web cams as they possibly can. Included with the software is a new Web Podcast Capture which leverages a new Dual Source Video Capture feature for allowing users to create picture-in-picture format podcasts.

Mac OS X 10.6 build 10A402a

Mac OS X 10.6 Server build 10A403 arrived on the heels of Mac OS X 10.6 Client build 10A402a earlier in the week. That build introduced some widely-reported interface tweaks to the Dock's pop-up menus and Expose.



One AppleInsider reader has published a few more screenshots of these interface changes to his blog, including the Dock's new menus, Exposé's new grid view, and changes to the Dock's grid view scroll bars.