Apple Accidentally Seeds User a Pre-Release of Mac OS X 10.6.3

Apple may have accidentally allowed a user to update to a pre-release version of Mac OS X 10.6.3 via Software Update, according to a TUAW report.

The reader emailed in after running Software Update on his new 2.8GHz i7 iMac last night.

"I got a new 27-inch iMac earlier this week," he wrote. "Last night I checked for updates and it starts 'Downloading **PRERELEASE** Mac OS X Update...' I figured what the heck and let it go. Now my iMac is on 10.6.3 which as far as I know isn't available yet?! I am not a developer or anything so I am not sure why this happened."


This kind of update does not normally appear in the wild on Software Update. Prerelease, and specifically "**PRERELEASE**", updates refer to Apple-internal builds distributed to any Apple employee who has access to Apple's VPN. A **PRERELEASE** build is typically seeded to employees 24 to 48 hours before the build goes public via Software Update.

The pre-release weighed in at a whopping 1.19GB with a build number of 10D527; which was released to developers today.