Proving yet again that there’s no rest for the (not really) wicked, reports have surfaced today with evidence that Apple is already hard at work on the next version of Mac OS X, not even three months after the successful launch of 10.6 Snow Leopard.

Presumably to bear the Mac OS X 10.7 moniker, the new information was found amongst a database of changes to the open source “launchd” framework, which is in charge of processes running on the system as well as booting Mac OS X. This particular entry contains an error message with the text string “11A47” as a reference to the OS X build number being used.

Comparing this text string to previous ones shows that 11A47 is likely an entirely new OS X rather than a simple “point” update. As MacRumors points out, Mac OS X Snow Leopard 10.6 was termed Build 10A432, while the subsequent 10.6.1 update was Build 10B504 and the 10.6.2 update released last week was Build 10C540. For comparison, Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard had a build number of 9A571.

Given Apple’s historical build number schemes, 11A47 would refer to an early version of Mac OS X 10.7, which they have probably been tinkering away on for at least a month or two (if not longer). Speculation is already running rampant that the next version of Mac OS X will bring on the new features, especially in light of Snow Leopard 10.6 being primarily a tune-up for the future.

Of course, when we’ll see such a 10.7 announcement (let alone release) is anyone’s guess… let the games begin!