Mike Wuerthele
With speculation about an imminent release of new hardware growing, Apple has issued its third macOS Sierra 10.2 beta release in a week, and another version of the watchOS 3.2 beta for developers.
macOS 10.12.4 beta 8
MacOS 10.12.4 contains Night Shift. The feature, first found in iOS 9.3 alters monitor parameters to reduce exposure to blue light to minimize user exposure to that part of the spectrum which potentially interferes with sleep cycles.
Dictation support for more languages has also been added, with improved PDFKit APIs eliminating some Sierra bugs. Beta 7 of macOS 10.12.4 had build number 16E191a, with build 8 having an increase of only one digit to 16E192b — an even smaller increment as compared to previous betas and the two-digit increase from beta 6 to 7.
watchOS 3.2
All of the watchOS 3.2 betas have included a new theater mode that allows users to prevent the screen from automatically turning on when their wrist is raised. It will also provide developers with SiriKit support, enabling apps to integrate more directly with the voice-driven personal assistant.
The week-old watchOS 3.2 beta 6 was identified as build 14V5245a, with the seventh release having build number 14V5249a.
Both releases are available to developers with registered devices.
AppleInsider Staff
Malcolm Owen
Oliver Haslam
Andrew O'Hara
Wesley Hilliard
William Gallagher
Christine McKee
3 Comments
I'm wondering if the notorious 4k scaling issue has been addressed in this release (see http://appleinsider.com/articles/16/09/23/troubleshooting-macos-sierra-filemaker-logitech-and-razer-devices-4k-display-issues). At this point I'm still running a perfectly good 32" 4k display (Dell UP3216Q) at non-scaled, blurry 2560x1440. The highest HiDPI option offered is 1080p, which leaves contents far too large. (SwitchResX isn't a viable workaround, so we are waiting for Apple to fix this bug …) Any insight into that? Thanks!
Could it be that 10.12.4 will be the last Sierra update before the next macOS release? Have we ever seen 8 beta releases before?