14 DAY TRIAL // AppleCare employees have been handed a near-final build of the upcoming OS X 10.9.3 update, but at the same time developers registered with the Cupertino giant’s annual seeding program have also received a test build that is one increment number behind. Regular Apple Seed users are not seeing these builds in their respective Update panes.
It appears that Apple is still not done testing OS X 10.9.3, the upcoming maintenance update for Mavericks users, having seeded the tenth beta to registered developers and a slightly updated build to AppleCare employees, which also carries the end user release notes.
Build 13D61 was handed to paying developers with such focus areas as Graphics Drivers, Audio, Safari, Mail, and Contacts & Calendar sync over USB in iTunes. AppleCare received an ever-so-slightly newer build labeled as 13D62, which comes with the official changelog that will accompany the update when it’s deployed to the masses.
A leaked screenshot (below) shows what the documentation states: “The OS X Mavericks 10.9.3 Update is recommended for all Mavericks users. It improves the stability, compatibility, and security of your Mac.”
The update is meant to improve 4K display support for Mac Pro (Late 2013) models, as well as for 15-inch Retina MacBook Pros shipped late last year.
Last week, the Cupertino company seeded a 10.9.3 build to AppleCare employees featuring a similar (if not identical) set of release notes, suggesting that the public release was just around the corner. However, Apple now seems to have extended testing.
Strangely, despite promising customers the ability to test these builds in parallel with its sea of developers, Apple has not provided the latest betas to registrants of the Beta Seed program for end users. The only 10.9.3 build available for download and testing remains 13D45a, or the same build that was made available for download at the time the program opened.
A pre-release version of iTunes (11.1.6) is also available for download to Beta Seed registrants, suggesting that 10.9.3 will be accompanied by an iTunes update. Finally, registered Apple developers are being offered Safari 7.0.4, an updated version of the company’s desktop web browser for OS X Mavericks. Safari 6.1.4 is offered alongside for testing under OS X Lion and Mountain Lion.