Today, on Apple's 29th birthday, the latest developmental build of Mac OS X 10.4 - aka Tiger - was declared gold master. That means all development is done and it now goes to the factory to get pressed for distribution. This process usually takes a few weeks, so the April 15th rumors look to be right.
- jim 4-01-2005 5:56 pm

was what?
- tom moody 4-01-2005 8:02 pm


Gold master? Just industry jargon. Not very interesting, but in case you were actually wondering here's the longer version:

Gold Master is the name for the final pre production version. Tiger has been distributed internally at Apple, and externally to a few select developers, for some time now. But it hasn't been complete.

Different teams inside Apple are working on different parts of the OS. When they make changes to the code they check in their changes to a central software repository. Then at some interval (probably every night, but it differs from company to company) they "build" the software. This means they compile all the bits of source code in the repository into an actual executable program (in this case an operating system.) Each new build gets a code number.

The latest Tiger build was 8A428. This became the "Final Candidate" a few days ago. If no show stopping bugs are found in a Final Candidate it gets declared "Gold Master" which means it is done and ready to ship for duplication. This is something like a "master tape" in the recording industry.

If a bug is found now it will be rolled into the 10.4.1 update. So there is no stopping the 10.4 release now. How good it will be before the 10.4.1 (and .2 and .3) updates is still to be determined.


- jim 4-01-2005 8:43 pm


I think "gold master" was left out of your original post, But thanks, this is interesting.

- tom moody 4-01-2005 9:21 pm


"gold master" is new to me. One of my favorite terms is "beta". Its meaning ranges from "almost ready to ship, just down to the final minor bugs" to "it no longer catches on fire, probably".
- mark 4-01-2005 9:34 pm


Mark, you'll like this one: Managing Programming for CEOs Part 1 – Decompiling Programmer-Speak.
- jim 4-01-2005 10:10 pm


Very nice.
- mark 4-02-2005 4:36 am


Well, it's official now. Tiger will be released on April 29th. Any computers bought on or after 4/12/2005 that don't come preloaded with Tiger can be upgraded for $9.95 when Tiger ships.
- jim 4-12-2005 8:00 pm





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