On Wednesday, Apple re-released a
fifth public beta of OS X 10.11 El Capitan for registered public testers, and debuted a slightly different built as the seventh developer beta of the forthcoming OS X upgrade. Public testers got build number 15A262e, while developers received 15A263e -- suggesting that the new public beta version is identical to the one accidentally released -- and then pulled -- on Tuesday.
The new updates come two weeks after the previous version, and like it have nothing in the way of new release notes or requested focus areas. The overall OS X release is designed to focus on performance enhancements and bug fixes, but there are some small tweaks and significant features expected in the final release, which should debut next month.
Noted changes in the seventh developer beta include a new setting to disable a forthcoming feature that allows users to "shake" the mouse pointer to momentarily make it much larger, thus locating it on Apple's ever-increasingly high-resolution and larger screens. Most other new features are more modest than in previous releases, such as a revamped and improved Mission Control, a Split View option that allows using two applications at the same time on-screen, Pinned Sites for Safari, more advanced functionality for Spotlight, and faster graphics processing.
The new betas are available from the Software Update section of the Mac App Store, with the developer version only available to registered developer accounts or through Apple's
developer portal. The final version of El Capitan is expected to be released in September alongside new iPhones, iPads, and a corresponding upgrade for iOS, known as iOS 9.
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