The race is on!

With Windows 7 coming up by the end of the year, it seems that Apple is getting closer and closer with its next Snow Leopard update. At first it seemed to be mostly "under the hood" type improvements, but your Humble Pie correspondent is getting the sense that there may be some other things as well, as the following report indicates:

Apple seeded developers with the latest build (10A314) of Mac OS X 10.6 (Snow Leopard) today. The latest beta version of Snow Leopard is said to be more stable than previous builds. Specifically, QuickTime X is said to have made significant strides since the previous version.

Apple, however, has not yet deployed the "Marble" user interface changes that have been rumored for Snow Leopard.

An exact release date for Snow Leopard has not been established , though recent rumors have suggested it could be as late as September. Apple will likely make further announcements and demos of Snow Leopard at the Worldwide Developers Conference in June.