Developers to focus on Power Nap, Facebook sharing

Apple unveiled a third beta of OS X 10.8.2 developers late Wednesday, just a week after the previous release. The new build, numbered 12C43, lists no known issues but asks developers to focus on several areas, including both the Facebook integration introduced in the previous build along with Power Nap, a feature introduced in the original release of Mountain Lion. The company appears to be moving quickly to seal compatibility with the forthcoming iOS 6.

With Apple having announced an event for September 12 that is expected to launch the "iPhone 5," the release date for iOS 6 (which the new device is expected to run) must also be imminent. Mountain Lion 10.8.2, expected to be launched on or just before the press event, contains several features designed to further increase compatibility between OS X and iOS.

In the previous beta, testers were asked to focus on Facebook sharing integration, which is also coming to iOS 6. Another feature coming to both is the optional merging of phone numbers and email addresses in iMessage, allowing incoming FaceTime or iMessage requests to be answered on any one of a users' devices regardless of how the request was initiated. Users can opt to keep some requests limited to some devices if they prefer.

The latest beta also looks to improve the Power Nap feature, which allows Macs to stay up-to-date with system and application updates, syncing or backing up data automatically even while asleep. The feature is currently limited only to recent Mac notebooks that came with built-in SSD storage.

by MacNN Staff