Following its latest seed of OS X Mavericks 10.9.3 beta (build 13D17) to developers, Apple has just pushed out a newer pre-release version of the 10.9.3 beta to employees alongside a pre-release version of iTunes 11.1.6 beta.
The new pre-release of OS X 10.9.3 (build 13D19) is available to employees and doesn’t introduce any major changes since the latest beta build seeded to developers. The last beta release asked developers to focus on testing graphics and audio drivers.
iTunes 11.1.6 brings fixes for the latest 10.9.3 builds and “restores the ability to sync contacts and calendar information to your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch from your Mac running OS X 10.9.3.” The ability to sync contacts and calendar data to an iOS device from a Mac was removed previously (to many complaints) but remained possible through iCloud syncing.
The final release of 10.9.3 could bring at least one new notable feature for users: support for driving 4K displays at Retina resolution and 60Hz output from 2013 MacBook Pros.
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This would suggest that Apple’s close to releasing 10.9.3 soon. Which is surprising considering the timeframe since the final 10.9.2 seed.
It’s very likely that they’re releasing this due to the Safari exploits showcased at Pwn2Own a few days ago. Good on them for releasing it relatively fast.
>>due to
Nah.
10.9.3 doesn’t exist solely because of the exploit the other day, there’s been betas for a few weeks now. But you can bet without a doubt it’s been ushered out this soon because of it.
If browsers are pwned at Pwn2Own: Apple, Google, Mozilla et al are at hand ready to figure it out and get straight to work fixing whatever vulnerabilities have been discovered. You can’t have publicly showcased sandbox-escaping vulnerabilities making the news and then leave them un-patched for weeks; it looks terrible, plus it’s just really bad for users. With the SSL bug the other week they got more and more trouble as each day passed, this isn’t as bad but it’s the same scenario.
A lot of people have been complaining about the missing direct sync option in Mavericks, because they were forced to using iCloud for this kind of sync, so this small update is actually something big. I guess they re-introduce this feature to speed up the Mavericks uptake.
I’ll be honest… I had no idea they removed that feature. I’ve been using iCloud sync since it was still called MobileMe so I guess I never missed it. Still nice to have it back though for those who prefer it or don’t want to use iCloud for whatever reason.
Interesting move, in a way looks to me like they are going to follow quick releases which has proven useful to many. I hope less buggy when there are too many quick releases.
Given the drastic improvement in 4K displays on the MacPro with the other beta’s this is a great move on Apple’ part
The local contacts sync has been missing indeed – never understood why Apple would remove that other than to force users in to iCloud. Good to read they come back to reason and listened to their customers, but very surprising too – we add local contacts management on the devices in the next release of DiskAid by the way.
Hopefully this will also restore the ability to sync mail accounts. The other day I spent a lot of time adding a lot of mail accounts to iPhones instead of just telling iTunes to sync these accounts from the computer.
It would be really awesome to apple let iPhone and macbook airdrop things with each other!!:-( why these cant!! It’s annoying!!!😡