14 DAY TRIAL // Apple’s sea of developers has been greeted this week by a new Mavericks beta ready to be scoured for bugs. The second release of its kind, OS X Mavericks 10.9.3 build 13D17 is immediately available for download by all paying registrants of Apple’s Mac Dev program.
Provided solely for testing and development purposes, OS X Mavericks 10.9.3 build 13D17 comes with only two focus areas – Graphics Drivers and Audio – and no known issues, according to a person who is familiar with the seed notes.
As usual, Apple tells developers that they should submit bug reports with every issue they encounter. Testers need to be aware that they will not be able to revert back to their previous configuration after updating to a Mavericks beta. “Please install this update on a system you are prepared to erase if necessary,” Apple says.
The first 10.9.3 beta was seeded to developers earlier this month. At the time, it was revealed that Apple plans to support 60GHz 4K Displays with Retina-grade pixel density.
People using 4K-resolution monitors confirmed on March 6 that “With 10.9.3, Mac users can now natively set their 4K monitors to run the Mac operating system at a pixel-doubled ‘Retina’ resolution.”
The first 10.9.3 beta arrived almost two weeks after 10.9.2 got rolled out with new features, tweaks, and fixes. One notable fix was for the notorious SSL/TSL vulnerability, also known as the “goto fail” bug, a flaw originally discovered in iOS and then found in OS X as well.
Developers who’ve installed a Mavericks beta in the past can easily download OS X 10.9.3 Build 13D17 using the OS X Software Update Seed Configuration Utility and install the beta OS on their respective Macintosh configuration.
To install Mavericks, developers need one of these systems, according to Apple: iMac (Mid-2007 or later); MacBook (13-inch Aluminum, Late 2008), (13-inch, Early 2009 or later); MacBook Pro (13-inch, Mid-2009 or later); MacBook Pro (15-inch or 17-inch, Mid/Late 2007 or later); MacBook Air (Late 2008 or later); Mac mini (Early 2009 or later); Mac Pro (Early 2008 or later); Xserve (Early 2009)
The minimum software requirements are OS X Mountain Lion, Lion, or Snow Leopard v10.6.8. Developers further need 2 GB of memory (more is recommended), and over 8 GB of available space.
Given the small scope (focus areas) of this 10.9.3 beta, we can expect Apple to release the update to the public much faster than it did with 10.9.2.