AppleInsider Staff
The second beta of iOS 8.1 for iPhone, iPad and iPod touch was supplied to developers on Tuesday, as Apple prepares for an anticipated public launch, presumably with Apple Pay, later this month.
The pre-release software is now available to download from the iOS Dev Center or via Software Update on a beta system. The new build is identified as 12B407.
It comes just over a week after Apple issued the first beta release of iOS 8.1. That version was identified as build 12B401.
Also supplied on Tuesday was Xcode 6.1 golden master seed 2, identified as build 6A1046a. A new Apple TV beta software was also made available for testing.
The first beta of iOS 8.1 was found to contain some assets for the forthcoming Apple Pay mobile wallet system that will arrive on the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus. Apple has said that the Apple Pay system will launch in the U.S. this month, which could mean an October debut for iOS 8.1.
In addition, beta testers have said the first build of iOS 8.1 fixed an issue that would prevent iPhones from properly connecting to in-car audio systems. Those problems were introduced with the launch of iOS 8.0 earlier this month.
The current latest public release is iOS 8.0.2, which itself was pushed out after the launch of iOS 8.0.1 broke cellular connectivity and Touch ID access on new iPhone 6 models.
Adoption of iOS 8.0 and up has been relatively slow, by Apple's standards, with 47 percent of devices tracked through the App Store running the latest point-zero release. That puts it tied with last year's iOS 7, and slower than last year's adoption rate, suggesting that users have been reluctant to update since iOS 8 became available in mid-September.
Christine McKee
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31 Comments
Will this fix my iPhone 6 connection to the pathetic Sprint Spark network?
I hope 8.1 fixes copy/paste issues and the bug where Safari keyboard freezes and crashes the app.
Other reports also indicate the return of the Camera Roll in the Photos app with iOS 8.1. Using an iPhone 6 Plus with 8.0.2, the Camera Roll 'album' is not present in the Photos app, but if you connect the iPhone and open Image Capture to transfer photos to the Mac, the images displayed are all the images that were in the Camera Roll album from the backup, in addition to all new photos that were taken with the iPhone. So the Photos app knows which photos belong in the Camera Roll, even though the photos cannot be accessed or found easily in Photos in 8.0.2. My recently added album has very few photos, but Image Capture finds 254 photos that were taken by the iPhone's camera. All the rest are distributed somewhere in all the other albums by date. Totally stupid. So let's hope the Camera Roll does return in 8.1.
Apple is like lean, mean, working machine. More power to Apple to stay on top of Software updates so quickly, and is beyond my imagination. Unlike Android phones where if you are lucky, you get update every some years and also lucky if your phone manufacturers willing to put resources to work on and release to your cell carriers and than if they feel fits in their strategy than put extra crap-ware and than release to you. Do you think, your android phone will ever get update with bugs, security fixes, etc... So decide where you want to spend your hard earn money to keep spending every year on new android phone just to get software update or best, easier to go with Apple where they will support 3 generations(4s,5,5s) older iphones with updates.
er, what? it's tied w/ iOS 7 but it's also slow?
how can we conclude users are "reluctant" to update, vs *unable* to update -- due to space constraints? i myself had to clear up a bunch of stuff in order to get it onto my 16GB iPads. many won't go thru the hassle.