New Snow Leopard Beta Seeded to Developers

Apple seeded a new beta version (10A261) of forthcoming Snow Leopard to developers. Officially this version only fixes identified/reported bugs, and is much more stable than the previous one.
Apple and Microsoft might be entering a race to be the first one to release the new version of its future OS, while Apple already demonstrated its experience to offer rock solid OS with Leopard, Microsoft is willing to make Vista history as fast as possible. Indeed, some analysts think that current decrease of Windows-running computer market share might be linked to the poor performance and experience level of users with Vista. Microsoft does not plan to release any further beta version of Windows 7 before its release candidate.
So, Apple might have the choice of either being first, or let Microsoft being first, and then come with a more validated and stabilized OS. Windows 7 is being developed in a record time, and many analysts are already suspecting that it could be a repacked/refreshed Vista.