Minecraft developer Nathan Adams said the pre-release for update 1.8.1 will arrive this week. Though he didn't provide specific notes on the update, he did say it will contain bug fixes, optimizations "and hugs."
It will not contain features, name changes, or Clippy, he confirmed, adding that name changes "will be coming very soon though."
"They're already possible to do in our systems, but there's no front-end yet," he said. "Soooon!"
Minecraft's 1.8 update, "The Bountiful Update," was released last month after 300 days in development. The result was "many, many changes" consisting of both new features, large game structure changes, and performance enhancements.