14 DAY TRIAL // People enrolled with Apple’s annual developer program are signaling the appearance of a new Lion test build through the company’s Dev Center. Seed 11D46 has no known issues and may be the GM version preceding the public release.
The new beta carries a build number of 11D46, people familiar with the software said. It arrives only a week after 11D42 which, to the developers’ credit, also seemed to be a Golden Master (GM) build.
The current seed has no known issues, which may or may not indicate that the public release is near.
Developers say Apple has asked them to focus on core areas of the OS such as iCloud Document Storage, Address Book, iCal, Mail, Spotlight and Safari.
As a Delta update, OS X 10.7.3 11D46 weighs in at 996.98MB. As a combo update, developers must download a larger 1.26GB DMG file.
Testers have been handed both Client and Server versions of the updated OS, with the server build coming in at 1GB as Delta and 1.34GB as combo. An additional package containing the Server Admin Tools is offered for download as well (roughly 200 MB in size.).
The seed notes warn that developers will not be able to revert to their previous system after updating, which means that these betas should be installed on non-production machines, or at least on a separate system or partition that they are prepared to erase if necessary.
“As this is a pre-release build, it is not advisable to use this software on a production system with information on it that you depend on for your business,” Apple reportedly tells developers. “You need to understand the OS X Lion Instructions for reinstalling the OS.” Additional installation instructions are then offered.
The OS X Lion Server 10.7.3 build 11D46 reportedly has no known issues as well. Focus areas include Address Book Server, Directory Utility, Server Applications, Profile Manager, WebDAV Sharing, Webmail, Wiki Server, and XsanFS, according to the people who have downloaded the software.