Mid-2007 MBPs temporarily excluded

Earlier today, Apple updated its OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion Developer Preview 3 for developers, though no significant changes or additions were listed by the company. For reasons unknown, Apple has excluded the mid-2007 MacBook Pro (identifier 3,1) from this build, but says it will restore support for the model in future releases. Numerous known issues from the previous build remain unaddressed, though a minor enhancement has already been spotted.

One of the new features in Mountain Lion, an adaptation of iOS's Notification Center, now has an additional option for controlling notifications from a "SocialPushAgent," though it doesn't define which social service that might cover (Twitter has its own separate Notification Center category already). Users can choose from either self-removing banners that appear temporarily (as seen in iOS 5), or "alerts" that stay on-screen until dismissed. Other refinements or additions may appear later as more testers dig into the new build, which is labelled 12A206J.

The new build appears through Software Update for registered Mac developers who have earlier builds installed, and now triggers opening the Mac App Store. A server version of the latest preview will be released shortly.

As mentioned, the latest build still has many flaws and is unsuitable to run on a production machine. Errors remain with Mail and integrated Twitter functionality, Notes does not sync with iTunes correctly, QuickTime screen recordings may not work on some machines with Nvidia graphics cards, and Java applets may not work in Safari, among other known issues.

The new build is the second "update" to Preview 3, which was issued in mid-April. Apple's Worldwide Developer's Conference, which opens on June 11, is expected to be the public's next real look at Mountain Lion, which will be released sometime this summer.

by MacNN Staff