With Mac OS X 10.5 ("Leopard") slated to ship next month, Apple is in the final stages of providing its last maintenance update for Mac OS X 10.4. Mac OS X 10.4.11 has now entered the pre-release build stage and according to AppleInsider, the new builds (labeled 8S2151 for Intel-based Macs and 8S151 for PowerPC-based Macs) are slated to address a handful of known issues, including repairs for system hangs when unmounting NFS volumes and copying files over a network.

The new fixes, combined with fixes from previous builds, will bring Mac OS X 10.4.11's number of code corrections to well over three dozen.

Other improvements that have been discussed from previous builds include the following:
-WebCore
-SearchKit
-BlueTooth (enabling/disabling)
-Networking and Cisco VPN
-Directory Services
-CoreAudio and m4a files
-File Manager and POSIX volumes
-CoreAudio and decoding iTunes Plus files

Of the two upcoming distributions of Mac OS X 10.4.11, the Intel version is reportedly hampered a single FireWire bug that could prevent drives from mounting.

The Delta installer for Mac OS X 10.4.11 reportedly weighs in as a 65 megabyte disk image for PowerPC-based Macs and a 119 megabyte disk image for Intel-based Macs. Users can expect to see the update later this month or in early October.

If you have any feedback or would like to suggest which bugs to fix, let us know in the comments or forums.