Apple has seeded a new build of Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard to developers, labeled "9A499", several reports indicate. The development team is now heading towards the Final Candidate build.

Premium and Select members of the Apple Developer Connection (ADC) program can enjoy this new build which is said to sport major performance improvements but remains buggy.

According to the roadmap revealed last month by MacScoop, this build may be considered as feature-frozen and we can expect Apple's development team to focus on stability for the next major build now slated for late August to early September.

Sources told MacScoop that, although there are still many bugs to squash on the current build, the roadmap is being followed as planed with no major issue that could delay the finalization of Leopard at this point.

Next month, Leopard should reach the Final Candidate status with an as stable as possible build. Then Apple's staff will have four to six weeks before bringing the next iteration of Apple's operating system to the Golden Master phase, or ready for duplication.