watchOS 4.1 Beta 3 is also available for testing

Oct 16, 2017 22:18 GMT  ·  By

Apple released today the third beta software update for its upcoming iOS 11.1, tvOS 11.1, and watchOS 4.1 operating systems to both registered developers and public beta testers.

Coming only one week after the second beta versions, which Apple released on October 9, 2017, these third beta builds are tagged as 15B5086a for iOS 11.1 Beta 3, 15J5580a for tvOS 11.1 Beta 3, and 15R5843a for watchOS 4.1 Beta 3, though the latter is only available for developers with an active and paid Apple Developer account.

Among the fixes that Apple implemented in today's beta updates, we can mention a patch for the WPA2 KRACK security vulnerability that was publicly disclosed this morning by researcher Mathy Vanhoef and puts millions of devices at risk of hacks, including iPhone, iPad, iPod touch, Apple Watch, iMac, Mac Mini, and MacBooks.

Apple also kept on its promise and addressed the reachability bug that prevented users from accessing iOS 11's new cover screen with notifications from the middle of the display on iPhone devices, along with various other bug fixes and performance improvements. tvOS 11.1 Beta 3 and watchOS 4.1 Beta 3 also received a bunch of bug fixes.

macOS High Sierra 10.13.1 Beta 3 coming soon

You probably noticed we did not mention anything about macOS in this story, as it looks like Apple didn't yet seed the third beta builds of macOS High Sierra 10.13.1 to developers, nor public beta testers. Same goes for the Xcode 9.1 IDE, which includes the SDKs for iOS, macOS, tvOS, and watchOS betas. A third Public Beta version of macOS High Sierra 10.13.1 should also be released shortly.

If you're using last week's Beta 2 builds of iOS 11.1, tvOS 11.1, and watchOS 4.1, we strongly recommend you installing today's Beta 3 updates, mainly because they patch that nasty WPA2 bug, but also because it will make your iPhone, iPad or Apple TV device run faster and with fewer bugs. Anyway, keep in mind that these are pre-release software and shouldn't be installed in production devices.