14 DAY TRIAL // As it’s working to get Dev Center back on its feet, Apple has yet to seed the fourth beta of iOS 7. While the company hadn’t issued a specific release date for the software, the seeding schedule is believed to have taken a week-long hit.
Apple last week announced a server-side breach which caused the Dev Center to go down for maintenance, taking numerous developer services offline, including software downloads on the iOS and Mac sections of the site.
A few days later, some of these services went back online, including "Software Downloads," suggesting that iOS 7 Beta 4 would finally be released. As of today, the software is nowhere in sight.
The Cupertino giant is actively testing iOS and Mac OS X betas with its sea of developers to release new versions this fall. These are iOS 7 (for iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch) and OS X (10.9) Mavericks (for Macintosh computers).
While Apple was able to seed a fourth development preview of OS X Mavericks days after the Dev Center went offline, iOS 7 Beta 4 remained unreleased.
Apple had previously seeded the iOS & OS X betas simultaneously (i.e. iOS 7 Beta 3 alongside OS X Mavericks Developer Preview 3).
The Mac maker also seeded a Mountain Lion beta (OS X 10.8.4 build 12F26) without problems last week, leading us to believe that iOS 7 development is no longer following its original course.
The delayed iOS 7 Beta 4 will (understandably) cause concerns that Apple is falling behind schedule putting the finishing touches on its redesigned mobile software.
So far, however, Apple hasn’t confirmed this scenario. For all we know, things could be progressing beautifully internally.
Apple’s Developer site is currently offering a System Status tool to enable registrants to keep track of the services going online as the company works to restore full functionality of the Dev Center.
At the moment, Apple offers access to Certificates, Identifiers & Profiles, Software Downloads, iOS Dev Center, Mac Dev Center, Safari Dev Center, iTunes Connect, and the Bug Reporter tool.
Just as many services remain offline at the moment, including Xcode Automatic Configuration, Pre-Release Documentation, Videos, Member Center, and several others.