14 DAY TRIAL // Apple is reportedly gearing up to seed developers with new betas of the iOS 4.3 firmware, seemingly rushing development for a public release in the near future.
The Boy Genius Report (BGR) today cites one of its Apple sources as saying that “there will be yet another beta build posted for developers, wearing the build number 8F5166b, at some point today.”
Generally accurate in Apple matters, the website appropriately points out that this would mark the third time Apple seeds a new iOS 4.3 beta to developers in just as many weeks.
As such, it is believed that the company is moving quickly “to get point-upgrade finalized.”
Should the report prove accurate, developers enrolled with Apple's paid programs will be able to download the goods from the company's Developer channel here.
Alongside the new iOS beta, new builds of Xcode and the iOS 4.3 SDK would also be released.
Soon after the release of the latest iOS 4.3 builds to developers (beta 2), it was revealed that Apple not only plans the addition of two cameras on future iPad models, for FaceTime video chatting, but also plans to include Mac apps like PhotoBooth with the software, to further take advantage of the dual cameras.
Photo Booth uses a Mac’s built-in iSight web cam to take snaps of whatever or whoever is in front of the computer, and allows users to apply various effects and filters on the resulting photographs.
Various alerts and .plist files discovered in the latest beta also indicate that iPhone users running iOS 4.3 will be able to set up “Photo Streams” that friends could “subscribe” to.
Privacy preferences were also spotted in the files scattered around the Media Stream folder, suggesting users will be able to choose who is allowed to view their “Streams” and who is not.
At the time this discovery was made, it was speculated that Apple may be focusing heavily on developing a photo-sharing function akin to that of Facebook.
Finally, while developers at the time suggested that Apple would delay the implementation of recently confirmed Multi-Touch gestures for iPads.