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Apple iOS 5.1 beta 2 now available for developers, here’s the change log

Published Dec 12th, 2011 1:49PM EST
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Apple iOS 5.1 beta 2

Apple has just seeded iOS 5.1 beta 2 to developers, and hopefully, battery life is fixed for good. We’re combing through the update and will let you know what we find (it looks like you can now delete photos from Photo Stream from your iOS device), but for now, we have the full change log after the break!

Thanks, Austin!

Developing…

Notes and Known Issues

The following issues relate to using the 5.1 SDK to develop code.

Accounts

When creating an iCloud account, you can use any Apple ID as long as it is a full email address and not a MobileMe account. If you have a MobileMe account, you can move that account to iCloud. You can find more information at: http://me.com/move

APIs

  • The NSNetService class and CFNetService APIs do not include P2P interfaces by default. To browse, register, or resolve services over P2P interfaces, an application needs to use the Bonjour DNSService*() APIs noted below.
  • Setting the interfaceIndex parameter to kDNSServiceInterfaceIndexAny in the following API’s will not include P2P interfaces by default. To include P2P interfaces, you must now set the kDNSServiceFlagsIncludeP2P flag when usingkDNSServiceInterfaceIndexAny or set the interfaceIndex to kDNSServiceInterfaceIndexP2P. The affected APIs are:
    • DNSServiceBrowse
    • DNSServiceRegister
    • DNSServiceResolve
    • DNSServiceRegisterRecord
    • DNSServiceQueryRecord

GameKit

FIXED: App icons and profile photos are not loading in apps using Game Center.

iCloud Photo Stream

NEW: Photos taken using iOS 5.1 can be deleted from Photo Stream on your device and will be removed automatically from Photo Stream on your other iOS 5.1 devices. Older photos can be manually deleted from your iOS 5.1 devices.

iCloud Storage

  • Provisioning profiles must be enabled for iCloud in the iOS Provisioning Portal. To enable a provisioning profile for iCloud, navigate to the App ID section of the iOS Provisioning Portal and configure your App ID for iCloud. After enabling the App ID for iCloud, regenerate your provisioning profiles to enable them for iCloud.
  • The setSortDescriptors: method of NSMetadataQuery is not supported.
  • In iOS 5, files that are protected via Data Protection cannot be used with iCloud Storage APIs.
  • File names are case-insensitive in Mac OS X but case-sensitive in iOS. This can lead to problems when sharing files between the two using iCloud. You should take steps on iOS to avoid creating files whose names differ only by case.

Movie Player

Starting in iOS 5.0, in order to facilitate finer-grained playback control, a movie player is not automatically prepared to play upon creation. Call the prepareToPlay method to prepare the movie player. For more information, see MPMoviePlayerController Class Reference

Music Player

Using shake-to-shuffle causes Music app to freeze and playback to stop.

Security

In iOS 5, signing certificates with MD5 signatures is not supported. Please ensure that certificates use signature algorithms based on SHA1 or SHA2.

Setup Assistant

NEW: Immediately after completing the Setup Assistant, it may re-appear and show the wifi screen and/or final “Thank You” screen. The workaround when in this loop is to reboot the device.

SpringBoard Lock Screen

NEW: The lock screen can intermittently get in a state where double-clicking the home button will no longer bring up the camera button. To get out of that state, you need to restart the device.

Xcode/Developer Tools

  • NEW: This preview release of Xcode 4.3 is distributed as a single application bundle, Xcode.app. Delivering the Xcode tools in a single app bundle allows Xcode to be installed directly from the App Store, without the additional step of running the Install Xcode app. To install Xcode during the preview period, double-click to open the downloaded DMG file, and drag the Xcode.app file to your Applications folder.Within Xcode, you can launch additional developer tools, such as Instruments and FileMerge, via the menu item Xcode -> Open Developer Tool. You can then pin the tool on your Dock for access when Xcode is not running. Not all of the tools previously included in the Xcode installer are bundled in this preview release.
  • In the iOS 5 development tools, it is possible to extract APIs used by an application and have them checked for use of private APIs. This option is offered when you validate your application for app submission.
  • FIXED: A bug in the documentation organizer causes an exception when you type in any field in the content area. To prevent the need to log into the developer website from Xcode, download documentation sets locally using Xcode’s documentation preference pane and enable the ‘Check for and install updates automatically’ checkbox as a workaround.
  • FIXED: “uninstall-devtools” script mistakenly removes files and packages even if Xcode is still running. Be sure to quit any running copy of Xcode before starting the “uninstall-devtools” script.
  • FIXED: The Network Link Conditioner daemon cannot be launched after installing the Networking Link Conditioner without a reboot. You can manually workaround the issue with a restart or by the following command: sudo launchctl load /system/library/launchdaemons/com.apple.networklinkconditioner.plist.]

 

Jonathan S. Geller
Jonathan Geller Founder, President & Editor-in-chief

Jonathan S. Geller founded Boy Genius Report, now known as BGR, in 2006. It became the biggest mobile news destination in the world by the end of 2009, and BGR was acquired by leading digital media company PMC in April 2010.

Jonathan is President of BGR Media, LLC., and Editor-in-chief of the BGR website.

What started as a side project at the age of 16, quickly transpired into 24-hour days and nights of sharing exclusive and breaking news about the mobile communications industry. BGR now reaches up to 100 million readers a month through the website, syndication partners, and additional channels.