On Wednesday, with the release of the massive security update Mac OS X 10.5.3, Apple Inc. has managed to significantly improve the performance of its Leopard operating system. The upgrade takes care of more than 40 compatibility and security flaws that are affecting a series of applications, including Address Book, VoiceOver, AirPort, Automator, Parental Controls, Spaces, Time Machine, iCal, iChat and Mail.

Users can download the Mac OS X 10.5.3 manually from the company’s website or install it through the integrated update feature of the Mac OS X.

This is the third upgrade Leopard has received since its launch in October 2007. In the second half of March 2007, Apple released an impressive set of patches fixing no less than 93 vulnerabilities, which had been discovered up to that point in almost every component of its operating systems. The company’s patches fixed problems in both the server and client editions of Mac OS X Tiger and Leopard. The most important ones were some password and authentication bugs detected in Kerberos, Podcast Producer, Preview and Printing.

Although no official statement has been released on the upcoming generation of iPhones, that will feature faster Internet speeds, the word on the web is that it will be unveiled at Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference in San Francisco, in June. That is also when the company said it would showcase OS X iPhone Development Platforms.