New reports on build 8A294 reveal some features and improvements on iChat, Safari, network assistants, OpenType and more.

While AIM users could have video chat sessions with iChat users, since the introduction of iChat AV 2.0, Apple seems to intend to change this in the future by also supporting audio-only chat between AIM and iChat. Although the AIM buddies are shown as available for audio-conference, the feature doesn't seem to work properly, this signifies Apple is planing to add this feature to iChat 3.0 though. We can also notice that there are some slight UI changes in the way iChat displays groups and that there is an option to change your profile.

Safari can now display PDF documents directly into the browser window, this feature is built-in and not based on any plug-in. We can also notice that Safari shows the connection errors directly on a web page and sometimes suggests to open the network diagnostics assistant.

Network Diagnostics consists of verifying if the Mac is well configured to connect to the internet.

OpenType support is also much improved and more internationnal Fonts have been added.

Finally, sources confirm performance and stability improvements, though still not perfect. By the way when an application quits unexpectedly on Tiger, a new button on the error dialog box allows you to restore applications ' default settings and launch it again.