Third developer betas of iOS 13.3, iPadOS 13.3, tvOS 13.3, watchOS 6.1.1 now available

Apple has moved on to its third round of the current beta-testing process for iOS 13.3, iPadOS 13.3, tvOS 13.3, and watchOS 6.1.1, providing the third builds of each to developers for testing.

The latest builds can be acquired by developers in the beta-testing scheme via the Apple Developer Center, or as an over-the-air update for hardware already using earlier beta builds. A public beta version of the releases is expected to start arriving soon, and will be available through the Apple Beta Software Program website.

The second round of developer betas were released on November 12, while the first set were issued on November 5.

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The initial iOS 13.3 beta fixed a problem introduced in iOS 13.2 hindering multitasking, by killing background app processes and making users lose work or progress in the apps over time. An update was also made to the Apple Watch app icon, showing a grey center in the Digital Crown instead of black.

Updates were also made to allow the disabling of Memoji on the keyboard, while Screen Time had a new category for communications. Support for NFC, USB, and Lightning security keys in Safari under the WebAuthn standard is also included, though compatibility isn't extended to all wireless versions at this time.

AppleInsider, and Apple itself, strongly suggest users avoid installing betas on to "mission-critical" or primary devices, due to the small possibility for data loss or other problems. It is instead recommended to install betas onto secondary or non-essential devices, and to ensure there are backups of important data available in the event things go awry.

Find any changes in the new betas? Reach out to us on Twitter at @AppleInsider or @Andrew_OSU, or send Andrew an email at andrew@AppleInsider.com.

3 Comments

dewme 10 Years · 5775 comments

About 5 years ago

This one doesn’t seem to be going well at all on my iPad Pro 10.5” with 512 GB. It’s been updating for about 45 minutes so far and the progress bar not moving. No problems on iPad Pro 12.9” (first version) which completed in 10 minutes. Something is clearly wrong ... maybe it’s me but the frequency of software fails from Apple seems to be increasing at an alarming rate. Beta or not, developers need to take pride in their work at all levels and in all phases of the development cycle. A fail is a fail.

Update:

After letting the install sit for an hour I did a hard reboot and the install finished.

I fully accept the responsibility associated with being a beta tester, but I’d still be very upset if a member of my software development team let any release, beta or not, ship with an egregious install issue on a contemporary platform. To be perfectly honest, with the release frequency and constant churn of software streaming out from agile continuous integration/continuous delivery (CI/CD) development teams the distinction between “beta quality ” and “release quality ” software has become very blurry and is really a bit of a name game. It’s really ALL beta software when new releases are constantly being released, even if the releases are months apart.

PetrolDave 7 Years · 59 comments

About 5 years ago

Bring back “Chinese Wall” testing teams where software is independently tested before being let loose in the wild.

dewme 10 Years · 5775 comments

About 5 years ago

PetrolDave said:

Bring back “Chinese Wall” testing teams where software is independently tested before being let loose in the wild.

I do agree that a layer of independent testing and verification is necessary as a last line of defense, but not as the only means of testing and verification. Every developer must also be a tester and must constantly and consistently apply unit level, integration level, and build level testing at every step along the way. Unless the developer wants to be exclusively a tester he/she had better find a way to automate as much of this testing as possible.

The exclusive Chinese Wall approach lures too many developers into shirking their responsibility for testing their work sufficiently because they believe the test team will catch anything they miss. So instead of it costing $100 to fix a bug that should have been caught by the developer or automated testing it costs $10,000 to have it fixed in the release build tested by the last line of defense or $100,000 to fix it if it leaks out into the field.