iOS 5 Beta: The first Reactions + New features.

Apple has released a beta of the mobile OS to its developer community. Here's a look at the significant changes and early reactions from those who've used it.



Among continuous rumours about possible release dates for next-generation iPhone and iPad devices, Apple has released a beta version of the iOS 5 software development kit to its developer community. Coders have had four days to look at the pre-release software, and some first impressions are starting to emerge. As expected, the new version of Apple's mobile OS offers some new features to satisfy critics as well as the Apple faithful.

Apple released the iOS 5 SDK beta to developers on Saturday, giving the world outside Cupertino its first hands-on glimpse of the new OS. As expected, iOS 5 includes support for Apple's iCloud service, a new Notification Center, Twitter integration, and improvements to the AirPlay wireless media-sharing feature. But the new OS and SDK also include some important new enhancements for developers, such as automatic reference counting to simplify memory management, storyboards built into Xcode to ease the creation of view transitions within apps, and new tools to trace system resource consumption during the dev process.

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Now that the dev community has had four days to inspect the new software, some previews and first impressions are making their way onto developer forums and blogs. Understandably, most developers are tight-lipped about the new OS, undoubtedly wary of losing their standing with Apple by breaking the company's non-disclosure agreement. On the popular forum iPhone Dev SDK, moderators went so far as to spell it out for members: "iOS 5 is under NDA, as is any beta version of Xcode, and thus it cannot be discussed here. The proper place for such discussion or questions is the Apple Developer forums. Sorry, complain to Apple if you must complain."

Still, some developers have chimed in with their perspectives.

"I installed the iOS 5 beta and have been playing with it for a few hours. It's pretty stable, but there are some bugs," said one user on the MacRumors forum, confirming nothing so much as the fact that this is, indeed, beta software.

Cutting to the chase, one somewhat guarded MacRumors member offered this perspective: "FWIW, and without going into any details due to the NDA, I don't think iOS 5 is anywhere near prime time yet; it's very buggy and I'd advise sticking to iOS 4 if it's your only device you intend to install on."

Another developer on MacRumors was more forthcoming, noting a number of specific bugs in the beta, such as issues with notifications on the lock screen, troubles with the weather widget, minor Wi-Fi issues, and trouble with the new option to take photos from the lock screen. Several of these issues were confirmed by other members of the forum.

For a full change log of the iOS 5 SDK, which confirms much of what we're seeing from users on the forums and in the blogosophere, see this BGR post.

YouTube user Nate of NatesTechUpdate has also posted a video preview of the beta.
There's certainly nothing shocking about the presence of bugs in software at this stage of development. It would be more shocking to find a beta OS that didn't feature some nagging issues here and there. However, these early responses from the dev community do signal that coders looking to get their hands on the SDK for mission-critical development might do well to hold off a while longer.