iOS 12.x.x Speculation Thread [Merged]

[jessea]

The beta is always at least a week or two behind Apple's internal version.

By the time Beta 10 came out, Apple had already frozen iOS 11. Any bug reports would be taken care of in iOS 11.0.1.

Genuine question: do you have proof or are you speculating? How do you explain the problems we’ve seen in betas that are addressed by quick-follow releases? If Apple has hundreds of people using betas internally for 1-2 weeks, why do they post (and subsequently pull) betas with major issues like Beta 7?

 

[PBz]

Getting exciting in here lately

 

[Mlrollin91]

Genuine question: do you have proof or are you speculating? How do you explain the problems we’ve seen in betas that are addressed by quick-follow releases? If Apple has hundreds of people using betas internally for 1-2 weeks, why do they post (and subsequently pull) betas with major issues like Beta 7?

"Hundreds of people" is a far over-exaggeration. They probably have a couple dozen people. And mathematically speaking that is an insignificant number to the amount of developers out there. It is very unlikely they would catch all the bugs in "alpha" testing. They probably get a new alpha build every single day, so bugs will slip by. The revision number of beta 7 was extremely high, show that that build was fairly unstable from the get.

It has been known for quite some time that Apple is usually 2-3 builds ahead internally. The only proof I have to offer are people that are no longer active on the forum after Apple started cracking down. One worked for a bank that would get these alpha builds for Apple Pay testing.

 

[Dwalls90]

Forum: “We want a source!”

Self: *Acts as source*

Forum: “You don’t know anything. You guessed and got lucky.”

 

[Jimpilot]

Well better lucky than good.

 

[GreyOS]

Forum: “We want a source!”

Self: *Acts as source*

Forum: “You don’t know anything. You guessed and got lucky.”

There's about 2-3 people involved in this conversation, hardly the whole forum. What was the information you came across?

 

[JPack]

Genuine question: do you have proof or are you speculating? How do you explain the problems we’ve seen in betas that are addressed by quick-follow releases? If Apple has hundreds of people using betas internally for 1-2 weeks, why do they post (and subsequently pull) betas with major issues like Beta 7?

We know this is true because of a couple things.

1. Darwin Kernel version is always behind the build date by 1-2 weeks.

2. Launch day iPhones have manufacturing dates in late August. For example, buyers of launch day iPhone 7 received units built Aug 22-Aug 28, 2016. Yet, iOS 10 beta 8 was released Aug 26. China is ahead of Pacific Time by 15 hours.

Keep in mind the developer and public betas are not identical to the Apple internal versions. Apple takes time to prune all references and assets to future devices (such as iPhone 6.5" and iPad Pro) from the code. This means the dev and public betas are technically forks which can lead to problems.

 

[GreyOS]

We know this is true because of a couple things.

1. Darwin Kernel version is always behind the build date by 1-2 weeks.

2. Launch day iPhones have manufacturing dates in late August. For example, buyers of launch day iPhone 7 received units built Aug 22-Aug 28, 2016. Yet, iOS 10 beta 8 was released Aug 26. China is ahead of Pacific Time by 15 hours.

Keep in mind the developer and public betas are not identical to the Apple internal versions. Apple takes time to prune all references and assets to future devices (such as iPhone 6.5" and iPad Pro) from the code. This means the dev and public betas are technically forks which can lead to problems.

The other bit of evidence is that I’m pretty sure on a couple of occassions, features demo’d at WWDC have not been in the first couple of betas

 

[Jimpilot]

Well do we think we’re done with betas? Or one more this week?

 

[BeatsEU]

Well do we think we’re done with betas? Or one more this week?

My bet is one more and the GM.

 

[GreyOS]

Well do we think we’re done with betas? Or one more this week?

My bet is no more betas before GM next Tuesday

 

[gigapocket1]

My bet is no more betas before GM next Tuesday

I agree... usually apple doesn't release a new beta within 2 weeks of GM for major releases

 

[vtboyarc]

Deleted

 

[Nanotyrns]

It has been known for quite some time that Apple is usually 2-3 builds ahead internally. The only proof I have to offer are people that are no longer active on the forum after Apple started cracking down. One worked for a bank that would get these alpha builds for Apple Pay testing.

"You were caught on the MacRumor's forums..."
​

I'd still love to know how they load the OS onto the phones at manufacture. As they are rolling down the assembly line? WeeFee'd onto them while they sit in great mountains of packaging? On the flight over?

 

[JPack]

View attachment 779304

"You were caught on the MacRumor's forums..."
​

I'd still love to know how they load the OS onto the phones at manufacture. As they are rolling down the assembly line? WeeFee'd onto them while they sit in great mountains of packaging? On the flight over?

iOS is loaded during assembly. We've all seen news over the years about test photos left on the iPhone by assembly workers.

It's no great secret. The dev and public betas are at least a couple weeks behind Apple's internal version.

Foxconn and Pegatron are literally assembling over 100,000 phones every 24 hours for launch. Apple cannot wait until September 1 to RTM a golden version of iOS 12.

 

[Nanotyrns]

Foxconn and Pegatron are literally assembling over 100,000 phones every 24 hours for launch. Apple cannot wait until September 1 to RTM a golden version of iOS 12.

Yeah I imagined Apple had its own internal version for that very reason. I think its often forgotten that the dev betas are not really for Apple. They are so developers can be prepared with their applications for the new iOS at launch.

 

[GreyOS]

Beta#   WrkDays  Blds   Bld/Day
2       11       20     1.82
3       10       10     1
4       9        9      1
5       9        12     1.33
6       5        6      1.2
7       5        9      1.8
8       2        3      1.5
9       3        5      1.67
10      3        2      0.67
11      2        1      0.5
12      4        1      0.25

Speculation... they usually build at least every working day when actively developing the codebase. They won’t build on days when no code changes. Therefore I think around beta 9-10 development stopped on the betas. At this point, most bugs are fixed and they think they’ve given developers a good enough taste of iOS 12 to build their apps against.

Obviously Apple developers don’t hang around but direct efforts towards different branches, later releases etc. I’ve no idea how they manage their code, branches and so on, but here’s one loose idea. After beta 9/10 they branched into a GM branch where a few developers make finishing touches to the final release. Perhaps in this branch they make no effort to hide new iPhone features, build without the extra diagnostic stuff etc. They also branch to 12.1 which probably most developers are on.

But they’re all on standby to do beta development and make changes on the otherwise dormant beta branch if urgent bugs crop up.

This doesn’t really reveal anything about when GM might have been finished like I thought it might at first, and maybe my speculation is way off, but I found the data interesting at the very least.

 

[Sendmenudes02]

Beta 13, final beta or “GOLDEN MASTER” for tuesday?

 

[wesley96]

Beta 13, final beta or “GOLDEN MASTER” for tuesday?

GM for developers should land shortly after the product announcement, so if there's another release this week, it would be beta 13. But barring any show-stoppers, we probably won't see any further releases until September 12. iOS 11 had beta 10 quite close to the GM timing - September 6 - but it is regarded as unusual, much like the iOS 12 beta 12 which came out out of the cycle primarily to fix the annoying expiration dialog box bug.

 

[EMc00]

I actually think, that 12.0 is already baked into the new iPhones, and the GM would be delivered as 12.0.1 for non-beta devices, which addresses the bugs reported in the last 2 betas

 

[Ladin007]

Today last Mojave beta, no more ios beta

 

[souko]

I agree it won't be distributed to the public.

All I'm saying is, right now, iOS 12 has already hit GM stage. Even with today's update, we're testing older code that's about 2 weeks old.

"Hundreds of people" is a far over-exaggeration....

What is the point of beta teating than? If they have frozen GM why we submit bugs? They will not fix it. OK maybe they can fix it in 12.0.1 for example, but what about serious bugs? They have GM frozen and will not fix it in GM? Why we get 2 weeks old build? What is the point of it?

 

[JPack]

What is the point of beta teating than? If they have frozen GM why we submit bugs? They will not fix it. OK maybe they can fix it in 12.0.1 for example, but what about serious bugs? They have GM frozen and will not fix it in GM? Why we get 2 weeks old build? What is the point of it?

Apple is not relying on the public to catch serious and obvious bugs. They have plenty of staff on payroll to do that along with automated testing. However, public beta testing gives Apple more opportunity to catch subtle or obscure bugs.

The code doesn't change significantly between beta versions. Obscure bugs on Beta 7 are likely to show up on Beta 10.

Apple needs time to prune references to unannounced devices from the code. This takes time and resources. Giving the public Beta n-2 or n-3 is a good compromise between security and public outreach.

 

[dan9700]

Nothing today as its labour day

 

[wesley96]

What is the point of beta teating than? If they have frozen GM why we submit bugs? They will not fix it. OK maybe they can fix it in 12.0.1 for example, but what about serious bugs? They have GM frozen and will not fix it in GM? Why we get 2 weeks old build? What is the point of it?

On one occasion there was indeed a “GM2” to fix an issue that cropped up if you updated a device, as opposed to just loading the firmware to a new device. But other than that, yes, it would be frozen.