14 DAY TRIAL // With Yosemite scheduled to make its public debut next week, Apple has seeded the third GM candidate to developers looking to iron out any leftover bugs.
Mere days after publishing GM Candidate 2 to the Mac Dev Center, the company offers a third candidate for download. The reasons are stated neither on the downloads page nor in the Mac App Store update description.
Finalizing Yosemite ahead of its public release
Apple is known to have plans to release Yosemite this month. Carrying the 10.10 designation, this version of OS X is actually the eleventh major release of the company’s desktop operating system. It brings one of the biggest graphical overhauls in years and adopts key features from the iOS mobile operating system powering iPhones and iPads. These features are both functional and aesthetic.
Yosemite pushes the boundaries of desktop-mobile synergy with Continuity, a set of actions and functions that allow users to start an activity on iOS and continue it on OS X, and vice versa. This includes answering calls and writing text messages. Apple calls this Handoff.
“When your Mac and iOS devices are near each other, they can automatically pass whatever you’re doing from one device to another,” the company explains. “Say you start writing a report on your Mac, but you want to continue on your iPad as you head to your meeting. Handoff lets you switch over and pick up instantly where you left off.”
“Or maybe you start writing an email on your iPhone, but you want to finish it on your Mac. You can do that, too. Handoff works with Mail, Safari, Pages, Numbers, Keynote, Maps, Messages, Reminders, Calendar, and Contacts. And app developers can easily build Handoff into their apps,” Apple adds.
For developers
Programmers coding for Yosemite will be able to further extend the OS X experience beyond the desktop. The OS was announced this summer alongside the Swift programming language. Apple offers tutorials and videos for using Swift efficiently with Xcode 6. The Cupertino giant has also made advances in SpriteKit, SceneKit, Safari, iCloud, and more.
To build apps for OS X Yosemite, developers must make sure they have at least the first OS X Yosemite GM candidate and Xcode 6.1 GM seed installed on their Macintosh computer.
According to the company, “With these releases, Swift is now final and you can submit your Mac apps written with Swift to the Mac App Store.” To download OS X Yosemite GM Candidate 3, visit the Mac Dev Center and log in with your developer credentials.