14 DAY TRIAL // As Apple rolled out OS X Mountain Lion Server DP4, developers registered with the company’s annual $99 program leaked the seed note for the newest Client version (Developer Preview 3), revealing that Apple still has a ton of bugs to iron out before it can roll out the final version to the general population.
The documentation states that “OS X Mountain Lion Developer Preview 3 is prerelease software,” which means that testers shouldn’t employ it for serious work or, as Apple puts it, "in a commercial operating environment or with important data."
“You should back up all of your data before installing this software and regularly back up data while using the software,” Apple says, adding that testers will not be able to upgrade to the final release from this build.
Failed installations can be repaired with Disk Utility from a Recovery HD.
Next up come the “architecture requirements,” which reveal that most Macs released between Mid 2007 and now are supported.
Finally, the seed note includes the “known issues”, which generally act as a good indicator as to when the final builds will be ready for deployment.
Counting well over two dozen, these are only the “known” problems with the software, meaning that even if Apple manages to fix them all, new ones can still emerge between this developer build and the next (including the Golden Master release).
In other words, there’s still a chance Apple won’t release Mountain Lion at the WWDC 12 keynote address, but rather in late Summer, as initially estimated. Courtesy of 9to5mac.com, the full list of known issues in OS X Mountain Lion DP3 awaits below:
Known Issues
· On systems with FileVault enabled, canceling the restart to the Mountain Lion Developer Preview 3 Installer may leave your system unable to present a password dialog at boot time. You can repair the problem by holding down command-R to boot to the Recovery OS and then using Disk Utility to unlock and Repair your volume. · Installing OS X 10.8 over 10.7.2 or earlier with FileVault turned on may fail · Pre-Lion FileVault user accounts are not supported in this Developer Preview · Some Apple menu items such as Restart may not work when a sandboxed app is in the foreground · iTunes no longer syncs Notes · Mail’s photo browser cannot access the iPhoto library · Back to My Mac doesn’t work for the first 5 minutes after rebooting · DVD Player may not launch after inserting a DVD on some systems · Most help topics are unavailable in this Developer Preview · In the Recovery HD: · Some icons may be missing · Network Utility’s Lookup pane does not work · Time Machine restoration via a AFP share does not work · Restoring from a Time Machine backup via AFP does not work · Migration from a Time Machine backup that excludes paths such as /System may yield an unusable system · Brightness settings may change unexpectedly after reboot · Display brightness may be dim after sleep or reboot · If Mail is hidden at logout time, it may not be correctly relaunched during a subsequent login but will appear to be running · Java applets may not work in Safari · QuickTime screen recordings may produce corrupted videos or cause an exception when run on machines with NVDIA graphics Game Center · In this seed, the Game Center application will view Production data by default. Games in development will be programmatically switched to use the Sandbox server environment · No Top Games are displayed on the Me tab and no game recommendations are shown on the Games tab · To use Game Center in your game on OS X, you must install a provisioning profile that enables Game Center for your app. Code signing, entitlements, and provisioning profiles are all described in detail in Tools orkflow Guide for Mac · Multiplayer gaming with Game Center between iOS and OS X is not available in this seed · In the Game Center app, game detail information such as game provider, pricing, etc. is not displayed · The local peer-to-peer GameKit API (GKSession, GKPeerPickerController, and related classes) is not supported