iOS 7.1 beta 5 now available for download

Roughly two weeks after its last release, Apple’s has made iOS 7.1 beta 5 available for download. The new release comes exactly two weeks following the January 20th release of iOS 7.1 beta 4, which included a number of bug fixes and other refinements put in place as Apple prepares to release iOS 7.1 to the public. According to a recent BGR report, iOS 7.1 isn’t slated for public release until sometime next month, so we might still have a bit of waiting to do unless Apple’s schedule changes.

In the meantime, iOS developers with an iPhone 5s, iPhone 5c, iPhone 5, iPhone 4S, iPhone 4, iPad Air, iPad mini with Retina display, iPad mini, iPad (third and fourth generations), iPad 2, and iPad touch (fifth generation) can download the new update over the air (OTA) or using Apple’s iOS developer portal.

The latest public release of iOS 7 remains iOS 7.0.5 in Japan for the iPhone 5s and iPhone 5c, and iOS 7.0.4 everywhere else.

UPDATE: A developer has provided us with the full release notes / change log, which follows below.

Notes and Known Issues

The following issues relate to using iOS SDK 7.1 beta 5 to develop code.

Bluetooth

Known Issue

32-bit apps running on a 64-bit device cannot attach to BTServer.

CFNetwork

Notes

A compatibility behavior has been added to address an issue where some web servers would send the wrong Content-Length value for “Content-Encoding: gzip” content. Previously, NSURLConnection and NSURLSession would send a “network connection was lost” / NSURLErrorNetworkConnectionLost (-1005) error in this situation.

The compatibility behavior applies only if the Content-Length value exactly matches the expanded gzip’d content. It won’t apply for “off by 1” or similar miscounting.

Safari

Notes

A property, minimal-ui, has been added for the viewport meta tag key that allows minimizing the top and bottom bars on the iPhone as the page loads. While on a page using minimal-ui, tapping the top bar brings the bars back. Tapping back in the content dismisses them again.

For example, use <meta name=”viewport” content=”width=1024, minimal-ui”>.

Siri

Notes

This seed adds new natural-sounding Siri voices for English (Australia), English (United Kingdom), Japanese, and Chinese (Mandarin – China).

The iOS device initially uses a compact voice for Siri. After you have configured a Wi-Fi network and have the device connected to a power source, iOS will automatically download and install a higher quality version.

Sync

Known Issue

In some situations, the “Connect to iTunes over USB to re-enable Wi-Fi Sync” prompt is not shown after an update as expected. Connecting to iTunes to re-enable Wi-Fi Sync is still required (and still functions as expected), it is just that the UI is not shown.

After upgrading to beta 5, iTunes Wi-Fi Sync users should connect their devices to their hosts to re-pair to enable wireless syncing.

UIKit

Known Issues

• Bar button background images are ignored in apps built and deployed to iOS 7.1 when they are set using UIBarButtonItem setBackgroundImage:forState:style:barMetrics: with UIBarButtonItemStyleBordered as the style argument.Workaround: Use UIBarButtonItemStylePlain or UIBarButtonItemStyleAny in this case, or use UIBarButtonItem setBackgroundImage:forState:barMetrics:.
• If a UITextField or a UILabel that is baseline aligned with constraints has attributes that change after the constraints have been added, the layout may be incorrect. The exception to this is -setFont: on UILabel, which should work as expected.Workaround: Avoid making changes in UITextField or UILabel after adding baseline-alignment constraints. If you must make changes, you should remove the constraints and then reapply them afterward. Note that this is a performance hit, so don’t do it unless it is necessary.
• The backIndicatorTransitionMaskImage from a storyboard or a xib will not be interpreted correctly at runtime.Workaround: Set the backIndicatorTransitionMaskImage in code.