14 DAY TRIAL // Wi-Fi, Mail, and Notification Center are only a handful of areas where Yosemite needs fixes, and Apple is now preparing to deliver. Developers have been greeted by the first incremental update to Yosemite this week, with instructions from the mother-ship to focus testing on the aforementioned components.
As usual, the build is a beta and is being provided for testing and development purposes to all registrants of the Mac Developer Program. Those who want to be sure that Apple irons out nasty bugs must submit a report using the online Bug Reporter at bugreporter.apple.com.
Testers will need to specify “10.10.1 (14B17),” which includes the version number and the build designation, in the bug title and description. They will further need to include a summary, steps to reproduce, results, and more details in their submission, to increase the chances of having the bug processed fast and painlessly.
What’s new in OS X 10.10.1
Nothing much. At least not yet. This is the first such update from Cupertino, with many others expected to follow through 2015. This first incremental update will most likely be released to the public in the coming weeks, as there are some pressing issues inside the OS.
If the release notes accompanying this early beta are any indication, Apple has confirmed with its engineers that Yosemite suffers from a flaw preventing it from keeping a decent Wi-Fi connection going.
A thread on Apple’s forums discussing the issue has reached more than 31,500 visits, with almost 200 replies. Most users are reporting the same experience: “It does the ‘trying to connect’ thing then stops and turn off on it's own,” as customer GalagBasha puts it.
In addition to trying to fix Wi-Fi connections, Yosemite 10.10.1 also promises to deliver fixes and enhancements for Exchange accounts in Mail. OS X’s mail has been plagued by issues surrounding Gmail and Exchange since forever. Chances are Apple needs to work closely with Microsoft to address these issues, and so they probably waited to do that after Yosemite’s public debut.
Notification Center is the third area of focus mentioned by Apple in its seed note. It isn’t clear what developers should be looking for, but apparently there are some bugs there as well.
If you’re downloading this for the first time, you'll need to log into your Apple Developer account and grab the “OS X Software Update Seed Configuration Utility” first.
Run the installer resulted from the mounted DMG file and the Mac App Store will open automatically. In the Mac App Store, visit the Updates pane. There, you should see the latest version of OS X Yosemite available for download (in this case, 10.10.1 build 14B17).
Those of you who have already installed the “OS X Software Update Seed Configuration Utility” on their Macs will only need to choose “Software Update” from the Apple menu.