14 DAY TRIAL // A new beta of Yosemite has been seeded to registered Apple developers carrying a new build number and a total of four focus areas, including the previously three listed in older betas, as well as an all-new area: Bluetooth.
Available as a free download to registrants of the Mac Developer Program, the new beta is labeled as build 14C99d and asks testers to focus their skills on Wi-Fi, Mail, VoiceOver, and Bluetooth. This last area has been added only recently, while the previous three have long been the focus of Apple’s 10.10.2 testing initiative.
What’s wrong with Bluetooth?
It isn’t immediately clear why Bluetooth is suddenly such an important area of focus in OS X development, but one potential reason is the upcoming Apple Watch. Key features in iOS and OS X converge all the time, and we suspect that the Apple Watch will have at least one reason to integrate with desktop computers (though we can’t imagine what it is).
Another possibility (and frankly the more plausible one) is that Apple is looking to patch Bluetooth-related bugs in OS X. Wireless technologies are almost never 100% reliable, so maintenance is crucial every once in a while, especially when new OSes and devices make their appearance.
Wi-Fi, Mail, VoiceOver
Wi-Fi is also an important area of focus, and has been for the past two months. Users keep reporting connectivity problems ever since making the jump to Yosemite, and many of them are none too pleased with the way Apple is handling the situation. Some even think the company’s best days are behind it because of its inability to patch annoying bugs discovered in the original version of Yosemite in October.
Mail has been buggy since day one as well, something we’ve been able to confirm through our own testing. The software crashes on a regular basis, and the newly-included Markup feature takes forever to load the annotation tools. VoiceOver remains one area where only Apple seems to know that something is in need of fixing / tweaking.