14 DAY TRIAL // Starting this Friday, developers are being offered a new beta of Mac OS X 10.7 through Apple’s seeding channels. Mac OS X Lion Developer Preview 3 features enhancements including a redesigned login screen, a fully functional Reading List in Safari, new wallpapers (one featuring Apple’s lion), a dedicated application for the Mission Control window management function, and more.
Some developers are informing that Apple pulled the new Developer Preview 3 of Lion shortly after it had been released via Software Update, though this is unconfirmed for now. The changes described below are what they reported before the alleged pulling had occurred.
Apple seeded the 1.07GB update to developers yesterday evening, with developers immediately observing the new boot animation, as well as other tweaks to the graphical user interface of the Finder.
New desktop wallpapers are also included, and developers report that Lion now features a standalone Mission Control application.
Mission Control was only activated by multitouch gestures or keyboard shortcuts in earlier developer builds.
Also reported by developers is that users can now add "desktops" by hitting a plus button, and Spaces can now be closed directly from within Mission Control.
Thumbnail magnifications of the desktops can be seen when hovering over the thumbnails with the mouse pointer.
According to those who’ve been able to obtain and install the new Lion, additional enhancements include new Reminders menu in iCal, a new 'next desktop' button in Dashboard, new options when right-clicking, improved compatibility with external displays, and a fully functional Reading List feature in Safari - now features the ‘eyeglasses’ icon.
Alongside Mac OS X 10.7 Developer Preview 3, Apple also rolled out Xcode 4.1 Developer Preview 5, a new pre-release version of the Mac OS X and iOS development toolkit.
Devs are being told that this particular version of Xcode requires the new Lion Developer Preview build. Xcode 4.1 includes iOS SDK 4.3.
Those who plan to submit Mac or iOS apps to the App Store are advised to continue using Xcode 3.2.5 or Xcode 4 on a Snow Leopard partition.
Some early noticeable enhancements in the new Xcode include new Jumpbar style scheme toolbars, enhancements to Xcode Source Control Management, enhancements to Performance Measurement and Analysis, support for NSPopover and NSWindow animations and behaviors in Interface Builder.
Mac OS X 10.7 Lion is set to launch publicly this summer, with Apple planning to make the final unveiling at its annual Worldwide Developers Conference next month. The event is scheduled to kick off June 6 with a keynote address from the company’s executives.