Latest Round of OS Betas Out to Apple’s Public Testers
07 APRIL 2022 - The betas Apple seeded to developers on Tuesday have made it out to public testers. Cult of Mac ran a piece Wednesday saying that the first betas of iOS 15.5, iPadOS 15.5, tvOS 15.5, watchOS 8.6, and macOS 12.4 were out to public testers.
While, they haven’t been out for long, the longer the betas are out, the more we learn. On release day for developers, spelunkers spotted references to “Apple Classical,” new buttons for Apple Pay Cash in the Wallet app, changes to SportsKit integration, and more. And now there’s even more.
Betas Bring New Notifications for Home, Sweet HomePod
iDownloadBlog has found a bit of performance functionality in the updates tied to HomePod. According to the piece:
Apple’s iOS 15.5 software adds HomePod Wi-Fi signal bars to the Home app, which also now features a notification for critical alerts.
The first one is what it sounds like. For the first time, the Home app will show you the wifi signal strength for a HomePod or HomePod mini. One would imagine you’d know if the speaker’s wifi connection was weak sauce, but now you’ll actually really know.
As for the Critical Alerts, these are similar to such alerts on things with screens, only without the screen. The piece explains that critical alerts are for truly important things like “health alerts, weather emergencies, battery notifications,” and so on. They break through Do Not Disturb on iPhone, but have not been turned on for HomePod. They can (or will be) in iOS 15.5. If that does not sound good to you, don’t worry. “Just like with standard notifications,” the piece says, “the user must opt-in to receive critical alerts [in the Home app for HomePod].”
iOS 15.5 Beta Makes Way for External App Purchases
While Critical Alerts can be critical to end users (it’s right there in the name), a potentially bigger change has been spotted in the iOS 15.5 beta. 9 to 5 Mac says the on-the-way update “includes support for apps with external purchases to satisfy regulators…”
Bet it won’t work. I mean, I’m sure the code will work. It’s the satisfying regulators part that I question.
The piece says examination of the code shows Apple implementing an alert “that will show up when the user opens an app that offers external purchases for the first time.” They’ve also spotted another alert that should present when someone deletes an app with the possibility of external purchases. That alert reminds folks that it may “not possible to manage purchases and subscriptions through the App Store” on those applications.
You know, I see no way that this can go wrong…
No word on when iOS 15.5 will be out to John and Jane Users. If you want to get in on the beta fun - beta.apple.com is the place to go. Remember, though, beta testing is suggested for spare or developer machines only. Running them on mission critical machines could brings shame upon your house and ruin upon the nation.
Okay, not really. But it could hose your machine.
