I've only been developing iOS since iOS 3 beta, but from what I can recollect, the final developer beta has always been unstable AND GM has always lagged final beta by at least one full month. Although Apple can always break their rules, if September 12 announcement date is true, Apple will release GM a week earlier leaving very little time for another beta.
If there's a beta 5 it's gotta be this week. The GM has to be ready for the iPhone 5 to ship with and is typically announced at the event which is *heavily* rumored of being Sep 12!
dont forget when apple ship the devices they must have the final OS on them, so i think that the GM will be released at least a week before the new iPhone's announcement, if not sooner.
It'll be released after the announcement. Then a week later on that Friday, when the iPhone is rumored to be released, the public build will be released to the world.
I'm pretty sure they will use the same pattern as the last two years. Phone announced sept 12. Gm seeded that day. On the 19th, iOS 6 released publicly. Sept 21 new iPhone released.
The graph is wrong in many places.
iOS SDK
That chart is inaccurate.
Hi, I'm the author of that graph. In what ways do you think it is wrong?
(Please note: As noted on the chart page, GM releases are counted as betas, so for example a GM after "beta 4" will be shown as "beta 5".)
That is a bit confusing then. Maybe GMs would be better shown on Final graph?
I thought about that, but the rationale is that I'm trying to show (and compare across versions) the time between a new iOS version being first announced until the time it is released.
Another reason is that Apple's use of the term "GM" is actually a lot closer to "beta" than a true GM. In the past, Apple has released "GM2", "GM3", etc.; furthermore we have seen GMs released that are different to the final public version.
If Apple is planning on releasing another beta / more betas, it will have to be some time this week.
iOS 5 has 7 betas plus a GM.
iOS 5 was close to beta 6 by this time though, so they're more spaced out this year.
They probably have nightlies for internal use, devlopment, and testing.Oh yeah, definitely. It honestly doesn't seem like it's making a difference, especially with these bugs popping up in each beta like the audio bug, etc. It seems like more frequent betas would be more beneficial. Not nightlies like Android ROMS but maybe every few days - a week.
They probably have nightlies for internal use, devlopment, and testing.
The beta's we are using from the iOS Developer Program are for developers to test their code against the changed API. Little glitches like audio bug, post to FB in notification center not always showing, keyboard glitches, crashing, are of no concern to Apple since the TOS made it clear this software is not for a production environment.
It serves it's purpose for devs to test code against altered API, nothing more.