Apple pushes out iPhone 3.2 SDK beta 5
updated 07:10 pm EDT, Wed March 17, 2010
iPad SDK still unfinished at beta 5
Apple on Wednesday released beta 5 of the iPhone 3.2 SDK for iPad through the iPhone Dev Center. The release has come just over a week after the launch of beta 4 and shows Apple accelerating its effort to refine the software before the iPad is available on April 3rd. Previously, Apple had released beta 3 and earlier seeds in largely consistent two-week intervals.
What changes if any exist in beta 5 are still unknown, but the company is generally understood to be focusing on bug fixes over new features. Some of the earliest betas made mention of camera-related features, but these have mostly been pruned out from beta 4 onwards, in part because the current iPad lacks any cameras. Despite allusions to multitasking, it isn't expected until at least iPhone 4.0, if not later.
iPhone 3.2 primarily enables the UI elements needed for the iPad but also adds features that are likely to spill into the iPhone and iPod touch, such as background images that persist on the home screen and four-way screen rotation that also extends to the home screen's icons.
