Reports have it that Apple has already finalized all of the features for its next operating system Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard. We also got word that its current OS, Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger, has just received its final maintenance and security updates.

This is consistent to earlier reports that Leopard has finally reached the release candidate stage. Furthermore, AppleInsider points out that Apple has started giving out hand-outs and training materials to its staff to prepare for the Leopard launch.

According to speculations, Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard will be available in the week of October 22 with October 26 targeted as the official launch. Meanwhile, the above mentioned updates come in two packages - build 8S161 for Power PC Macs and build 8S2161 for Intel Macs.

These two focused primarily on Dashboard with fixes provided on the software's underlying Webkit foundation and number-oriented widgets. Apple, however, keeps mum on the matter. The only official things dished out by the company are the seeds update for Leopard named 9A557/9A559 designed to fix wireless networking and RAW image viewing.