Apple has released iOS 5 beta 6 to developers today as the fall launch of the major iOS software upgrade nears. In addition, Apple released beta 6 of iTunes 10.5 to developers, which is required for syncing with devices that carry iOS 5 beta 6. Also, Apple seeded Xcode 4.2 developer preview 6 today, which is required for compatibility with developer devices running iOS 5 beta 6. iOS 5 will launch publicly this fall alongside the fifth-generation iPhone. The iPhone 5 is likely launching in early October, so we will most likely see the public launch of iOS 5 during that timeframe as well.
iOS 5 includes over 200 new features including an all new notification system called Notification Center, Newsstand for easy magazine and newspaper reading from the home screen, Twitter integration, iCloud support, an improved camera and photos application with photo editing, a location-aware Reminders application, over-the-air software updates, setup without a computer, iMessages, an improved Safari with Reading List and improved tabbed browsing on the iPad, an improved Game Center, iPad navigation gesture support, WiFi syncing, iPad 2 AirPlay mirroring, and more.
In addition, Apple has seeded a second beta of iWork for iOS with iCloud support and Apple TV software beta 5.
If you find anything new in today’s releases, please let us know at tips@9to5mac.com. Apple’s full change log for iOS 5 beta 6 is after the break for your perusal.
Accounts
When creating an iCloud account, you can use any Apple ID as long as it is a full email address and not a MobileMe account. If you have a MobileMe account, you can move that account to iCloud. You can find more information on iCloud at: http://developer.apple.com/icloud
FIXED: When setting up an iCloud or MobileMe account using the setup assistant and leaving Find My iPhone on, it might actually turn Find my iPhone off after the setup. Please verify in Settings/Mail, Contacts, Calendar/YourAccount that Find my iPhone is toggled On after leaving the setup assistant.
FIXED: Enabling iCloud services in Setup Assistant may not always be saved correctly. After completing Setup Assistant you should visit Settings > iCloud to verify the state of the iCloud account. If you have multiple iCloud or MobileMe accounts configured on the device you should also visit each of those accounts in Settings > Mail, Contacts, Calendar to verify each account.
FIXED: It is recommended that you disable Bookmarks on multiple accounts. If they are enabled, the results might be undefined.
AirPlay
Starting in iOS 5, video content in applications and websites are AirPlay-enabled by default.
iOS 5 supports AirPlay of video via AV Foundation.
Apple TV
Apple TV Software beta enables users to mirror the contents of an iPad 2 to an Apple TV (2nd generation) using AirPlay. This beta software also enables Photo Stream on Apple TV so users can access photos stored in iCloud. Apple TV Software beta is being provided to test the latest AirPlay functionality with your iOS 5 apps and web sites. If you wish to install Apple TV Software beta on your device, you must first register your device UDID in the iOS Developer Program Portal.
Apple TV may return to the main menu when exiting a TV show played via Home Sharing.
Music playlists are inaccessible via Home Sharing.
Binary Compatibility
On applications linked against the iOS 5.0 SDK, scroll view content offsets will no longer be rounded to integral pixels during a pinch gesture.
Calendar
Birthday calendars are not currently available via the icloud.com website or in Windows. They will be available in a future release.
FIXED: The default calendar is still the On My iPhone calendar despite setting up an iCloud account during Setup Assistant. As a workaround, reset the default Calendar after finishing Setup Assistant in Settings > Mail, Contacts, Calendar > Default Calendar.
FIXED: Pushing iCloud Calendar data is not working in iOS. To sync your iCloud Calendar, launch the Calendar app or refresh the calendars manually using the Calendars button in the top left corner.
Core Image
Several filters have been added since beta 1. The current list now includes the following filters:CIAdditionCompositing, CIAffineTransform, CICheckerboardGenerator, CIColorBlendMode, CIColorBurnBlendMode, CIColorControls,CIColorCube, CIColorDodgeBlendMode, CIColorInvert, CIColorMatrix, CIColorMonochrome, CIConstantColorGenerator, CICrop,CIDarkenBlendMode, CIDifferenceBlendMode, CIExclusionBlendMode, CIExposureAdjust, CIFalseColor, CIGammaAdjust,CIGaussianGradient, CIHardLightBlendMode, CIHighlightShadowAdjust, CIHueAdjust, CIHueBlendMode, CILightenBlendMode,CILinearGradient, CILuminosityBlendMode, CIMaximumCompositing, CIMinimumCompositing, CIMultiplyBlendMode,CIMultiplyCompositing, CIOverlayBlendMode, CIRadialGradient, CISaturationBlendMode, CIScreenBlendMode, CISepiaTone,CISoftLightBlendMode, CISourceAtopCompositing, CISourceInCompositing, CISourceOutCompositing, CISourceOverCompositing,CIStraightenFilter, CIStripesGenerator, CITemperatureAndTint, CIToneCurve, CIVibrance, CIVignette, and CIWhitePointAdjust
GameKit
Match data for turn based matches is currently limited to 4 KB of data.
NEW: Events will be passed to the delegate whenever a turn is made on a match, instead of just when it becomes the local player’s turn.
FIXED: When logging in to Game Center, the password may clear and login may not complete. Trying a second time will succeed.
FIXED: In this beta, GameKit Invites may fail. As a workaround, try restarting the device.
iBooks
iBooks 1.2.2 may fail to display some text or images in books. Please update to iBooks 1.3 in the App Store.
iCloud Backup
As this is beta software, it is recommended that you do not use the iCloud services to store any critical data or information. If you enable iCloud Backup, automatic backup with iTunes when syncing will be disabled. We also suggest that you manually back up your device with iTunes. Backups made with earlier versions of iOS 5 beta will soon become incompatible, and will no longer be available. It is strongly advised you upgrade to this version of the iOS 5 beta in order to continue backing up your devices. If you encounter errors restoring from a backup, or enabling a backup more than one hour after signing into iCloud, try deleting your iCloud account from Settings and adding it back. If errors persist, please try erasing your device and initiating the restore again.
iCloud Storage
NEW: If you call either stringByResolvingSymlinksInPath or stringByStandardizingPath on a path descended from your container, you’ll never be able to use the result to successfully perform a coordinated read.
NEW: On KVS, the per-key limit has been raised to 64Kb (to match the per-app limit); and the maximum number of keys has been raised to 256.
During the iOS 5 beta period, any documents stored on the servers might be purged periodically before GM. Therefore, it is highly recommended that you do not store any critical documents or information on the servers.
Provisioning Profiles no longer need to be enabled for iCloud in the iOS Provisioning Portal. All newly generated provisioning profiles are now automatically enabled for iCloud. If you are using an Xcode managed Team Provisioning Profile, click refresh in the Xcode Organizer to obtain a new iCloud-enabled profile. To enable all other provisioning profiles for iCloud, simply regenerate your profiles in the iOS Provisioning Portal.
If your application is using the NSMetadataQuery class, you must set a predicate, even though the predicate itself is ignored.
In this beta, the setSortDescriptors: method of NSMetadataQuery is not supported.
FIXED: To use iCloud prior to beta 5, you had to manually specify various container identifiers (your application’s Display set) within an Entitlements file for both of your Mac OS X and iOS projects.Starting in beta 5, to enable iCloud storage within your apps, simply click the “Enable Entitlements” checkbox in the Summary pane of your project. Xcode will create a custom entitlements file for your project that automatically includes your Team ID. You can add additional iCloud Container values as required by your application. (Note that you must regenerate your existing provisioning profiles, either with Xcode or in the iOS Provisioning Portal, to use iCloud storage.)If you specify a custom identifier string for your iCloud Key-Value Store or iCloud Container entitlement values, you no longer need to prepend your Team ID to the beginning of the string. Xcode will prepend your Team ID to these entries automatically
The container identifier string you pass to the URLForUbiquityContainerIdentifier: method of NSFileManager MUST include the team ID at the beginning of the string. As a convenience, if you pass nil, Foundation uses the first document container ID specified in your app’s entitlements.
There are issues using the Cloud Storage document API in conjunction with protected data which can lead to data corruption.
FIXED: In this beta, document-based applications cannot always detect when files change, move, or are deleted out from underneath them.
In this beta, file presenters (objects that adopt the NSFilePresenter protocol) do not receive some of the messages that they’re supposed to receive, especially:
presentedItemDidChange
presentedSubitemDidAppearAtURL:
presentedSubitemDidChangeAtURL:
You can workaround this by implementing the relinquishPresentedItemToWriter: method and checking to see if the writer actually wrote when your file presenter reacquires. You can also use FSEvents to observe file system changes
In this beta, messages about changes to files in a directory are not getting delivered to objects that adopt the NSFilePresenter protocol.
While reporting a bug related to the iCloud storage interfaces, please include the logs collected during your debugging session. To generate these logs, you must install a special debug profile on your device.The debug profile can be obtained from http://connect.apple.com. This profile enables the generation of debug logs that are needed to diagnose any problems using iCloud storage. The instructions to collect the logs are:
Install the profile. (The easiest way to do this is to mail it to yourself and open the attachment on their device.)
Reproduce the bug.
Sync with iTunes to pull the logs off your device.
Attach the logs to your bug report. You can find the logs in ~/Library/Logs/CrashReporter/MobileDevice/DeviceName/DiagnosticLogs.
These logs can grow large very quickly, so you should remove the profile after you have reproduced the problem and pulled the logs for the bug report.
File names are case-insensitive in OS X but case-sensitive in iOS. This can lead to problems when syncing files between the two. You should take steps on iOS to avoid creating files whose names differ only by case.
iMessage
iMessage beta 1 will be unable to communicate with iMessage users on beta 2 or later.
NEW:Setup Assistant does not input AppleID password in for FaceTime of iMessage.
interface Builder
NEW:The top-level views in a document that uses autolayout cannot have width and height constraints added. To workaround this you can add desired width or height constraint manually in code.
NEW:In Interface Builder documents using autolayout and constraints that Xcode generates cannot be deleted. You can “delete” these constraints by creating a user constraint for the behavior you are expecting. For example, if you drag out a button and Xcode generates a leading constraint to the button’s superview, and you wanted a trailing edge to the superview constraint, creating one manually using “Add Constraint => Trailing Constraint to Superview” would remove the leading edge to superview constraint.
NEW:It is known that equal widths/heights constraints can be broken on views that fill a container when resizing the window. If you resize the window and a equal widths/height constraint is broken, re-adding it will properly adjust the window to accommodate the constraint.
NEW: When editing the value of a constraint in the inspector, the constraint remains selected, and the outline view continues to show the constraint as selected.
NEW:In XCode 4.2 when copying views (either a single view or multiple views), both the user defined constraints directly on the selected view and the user defined constraints between the views being copied are copied to the pasteboard.
NEW:In Xcode 4.2 for a document using Cocoa Auto Layout, “Select All” in the canvas no longer selects the constraints and subviews of the edited view. If a view is selected, it will only select views. If a constraint is selected, “Select All” will select all constraints.
NEW:Changing the segment style of an NSSegmentedControl to “Automatic” might crash in documents using Cocoa Auto Layout. To workaround the issue use an explicit segment style such as Round or Textured, and at runtime, change the segment style to automatic using -[NSSegmentedCell setSegmentStyle:]
iPod
FIXED: When using the volume buttons on the device, or on headphones, the volume slider in the UI of applications may not update even though the volume level has changed.
iTunes
The version of iTunes that comes with beta 5 cannot sync devices that have the beta 4 software installed. To avoid this problem, do the following:
Sync any devices that have beta 4 installed to the version of iTunes that came with beta 4.
Upgrade iTunes to the version that comes with beta 5.
Connect the device and install the beta 5 software. (Understand that you might see a failure to sync error when you first connect the device.)
After installing the beta 5 software, restore from your the backup you made in step 1.
Videos purchased from the iTunes Store do not play on a 2nd generation AppleTV over AirPlay with iTunes 10.5.
When changing the host name of an email account in settings, blank messages may be seen in the unified inbox. As a workaround, delete and re-add the account instead of changing its host name.
OTA Software Update
If you are doing an OTA software update, you will need to re-sync your photos with iTunes.”
Photos
FIXED: When restoring photo libraries from an iTunes backup, some photos may not appear in the Photos application after restore. Please back up your photos before updating to iOS Beta 5.
Reminders
NEW: If reminders syncing is enabled for a Yahoo account and there is no reminders collection on the server, it will continually get recreated by the phone. Due to a Yahoo server bug, that collection will show up as an event calendar.
Simulator
Location services are not functional in iOS 4.3 simulator running on Mac OS 10.7 with Xcode 4.2.
Springboard
Push and local notifications for apps appear in the new Notification Center in iOS 5. Notification Center displays notifications that are considered “unread.” In order to accommodate push and local notifications that have no “unread” status, developers can use their application badge count to trigger a clearing of notifications from Notification Center. When an application clears its badge count (by setting it to zero), iOS 5 will clear its notifications from Notification Center.
FIXED: The UIPrerenderedIcon key (in the Info.plist file) is not honored in this beta.
StoreKit
FIXED: In-App purchase will not work for developers testing their apps with the iTunes Sandbox.
UI Automation
NEW: There is a known issue when using the performTaskOnHost API in a UI Automation script. If the task being performed with the API outputs excessively (say, thousands of lines of text) to standard out or standard error, the task may deadlock until the timeout is reached, at which point it will throw a javascript exception.
The lock() and unlock() functions of UIATarget have been replaced with the lockForDuration(
Starting in iOS 5 beta 2, you can now trigger the execution of an UI Automation script on an iOS device from the host terminal by using the instruments tool. The command is:
instruments -w
When using the cli instruments for UI Automation you can now target the default Automation Template and pass the script and results path into the tool as environment variable options. For example:
instruments -w