AppleInsider Staff
Just a few days after the third betas arrived, Apple has issued new builds of iOS 11.2, watchOS 4.2 and tvOS 11.2 to developers, with increasing frequency potentially suggesting that the public releases could arrive soon.
The new, fourth developer betas of the three platforms come just four days after the previous release. Notably, iOS 11.2 features some support for SiriKit in HomePod, even though the speaker has been delayed until early 2018.
Prior to Monday's third betas, the previous second beta was issued to developers on the preceding Monday.
The updates are expected to mark the public launch of Apple Pay Cash, which allows for peer-to-peer money transfers via the Messages app.
The last build also added a new display prompt when disabling Bluetooth and Wi-Fi in Control Center. Changes in iOS 11 leave those functions active for features such as Apple Watch connectivity, AirDrop and Continuity, but disable other connections to non-Apple devices and services.
The iOS 11.2 beta also adds support for 7.5-watt wireless charging with Apple's latest handsets — Â the iPhone 8, iPhone 8 Plus and iPhone X.
Early builds also rectified a Calculator bug, and incorporates a Now Playing widget for Apple TV media in Control Center.
Christine McKee
Andrew Orr
Wesley Hilliard
Marko Zivkovic
Malcolm Owen
33 Comments
I think Apple Pay Cash is going to be a big hit, enough of a hit to challenge other peer to peer pay services. This will be an interesting “other” revenue stream in the upcoming years for Apple.
Battery life improvement? I'm not upgrading my 6s Plus to 11 until this is fixed.
Apple's IOS 11 is the worst software product since Windows Vista... Vista was so bad, I left Microsoft and joined to the Apple family because their hardware & software was stellar... But the IOS 11 debacle has surpassed it... There are 3 major issues... 1st, battery life has fallen off the cliff on my iPhone... This morning was typical, I reviewed Appleinsider, Mac Hash & a couple of new Facebook entries and in less than 30 minutes my battery dropped 30%+ on my iPhone 6S plus... I use to be able to use the iPhone all day, but that is a distant memory!!!! The 2nd issue is even worse, the iPhone wifi connection... My wifi speed is 100 Mbps from my router... My MacBook gets 97 Mbps... My iPhone gets as low as 24 Mbps & rarely reaches 50 Mbps... I test the MacBook & iPhone side by side... This week I tried to download 2 very small apps, each were 7k in size, not megs, not gigs... One took almost 5 minutes to load, the other crashed after several minutes... 3rd, it destroyed Air Print & even after spending almost 2 hours with the "techies" trying to resurrect it, it is still a failure... Apple shoddy software releases totally degrades the "Apple" experience... We are not Apple customers, but rather "beta testers" fixing their constant crapware...