14 DAY TRIAL // The fourth beta of OS X 10.8.5 Mountain Lion is out on the Apple Dev Center. Available as a free download to registrants of the annual Apple developer program, the seed has no known issues.
Apple continues to ask testers to focus their coding efforts on five key areas of the operating system: Wi-Fi, Graphics, Wake from Sleep, PDF Viewing and Accessibility, as well as Mobile Device Management.
OS X Mountain Lion 10.8.5 Build 12F20 (Pre-Release) is “a pre-release update to OS X Mountain Lion 10.8 and includes a combo update, delta update, and seed note,” Apple tells developers in its email invitation to download and test the software.
Developers can either visit the Mac Dev Center to download the DMG manually, or they can use the Mac App Store’s Software Update tool to increment an existing beta build running on their test machines.
Before downloading OS X Mountain Lion for the first time, testers must ensure they are using a 64-bit, Intel-based Mac running either Mac OS X v10.6.7 Snow Leopard or OS X Lion.
The computer needs to pack at least 8GB of free disk space. For application development purposes, Xcode 4.4 or later is required.
Apple is developing this new version of OS X Mountain Lion in tandem with a brand new version of its desktop operating system called OS X Mavericks.
Developers have been handed OS X Mavericks Developer Preview 3 (Build 13A510d) earlier this week with numerous documented fixes, as well as several known issues that need addressing.
The exact launch date of OS X 10.8.5 is unknown, while OS X 10.9 Mavericks is scheduled to debut this fall.
Mavericks is also available from the Mac Dev Center by redeeming a code that can be used in the Mac App Store to download the software.