Apple seeds yet another iOS 5 beta to developers on Wednesday night, an over the air update less than half the size of the last one with few obvious changes -- with the exception of killing what appeared to be streaming music tracks through the iTunes Match beta.
MacRumors is reporting that Apple released a seventh beta version of iOS 5 to developers on Wednesday night, issued as a svelte 70MB delta update that can be downloaded directly to a device over the air. The August 31 update is less than half of the 144MB download required for beta 6, although no one has yet turned up any substantial changes in the new version.
That said, iOS 5 beta 7 does appear to have one major change for those developers lucky enough to get in on the iTunes Match beta -- the service no longer appears to faux stream music to a device, a “feature” which Apple earlier this week firmly denied the service has in the first place.
“Songs that are played are now permanently downloaded to your iPhone, iPod or iPad library,” MacRumors notes. “Even if you skip past a song, the entire song is saved directly to your device. That means as you listen to music, songs are pulled from the iCloud and stored. The main distinction is that users may have to manually free up space over time. Once a song is deleted, it will again be available for download once again in the same manner.”
Not surprisingly, both iOS 5 and iTunes Match are constantly in flux, and based on developer feedback is appears that both will still require further beta versions to hash out remaining issues. Apple has pegged the release for “this fall,” which could be anytime after late September -- although October is more realistic, judging from the amount of work it appears Apple engineers still have to do.
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