Feeling a little left out, betanauts? Were you upset last week when iOS 12.4 beta 1 was made available for developers and you waited and waited, checking your iDevice each morning to see if an update was available? Only to have it never appear?
Well, like an apologetic Santa, Apple has finally looped its Beta Software Program participants into the iOS 12.4 beta with Public Beta 2, released yesterday afternoon. So what do we finally get for our patience?
A big lump of coal.
What's New?
While we've been poking at our Software Update screens, staring at the final version of iOS 12.3, the developers who were given a week's worth of extra access have found nothing hidden in the code of this release to give us any indicator of what's going on behind the scenes.
There aren't any new features. No spiffed up UI. There aren't even any fixed bugs. The best guess is that Apple is using this release to seed code to support the soon-to-be-released Apple Card. Then again, without the card itself, there's not a whole lot to test.
What's Next?
If iOS 12.4 does indeed mean folks can start signing up for Apple Card, then we'll have a lot to talk about, but only after it's been released to the public in a couple of weeks.
The smart money is on Apple releasing the Apple Card either at, or just before WWDC on June 3. If that's what's happening, then the narrow scope of iOS 12.4 makes sense. The Apple Card is a brand new industry for the folks in Cupertino. They need this launch to be smooth.
For a that to happen, they limit what they're working on in the supporting software. The more features and bug fixes added to a release, the more likely they are to introduce something that could derail the star of the show.
So don't expect much out of this release. Apple will use the next two weeks to polish it and then either release iOS 12.4 just before WWDC or just after the keynote.
Speaking of, developers will get first access to the much-anticipated iOS 13 soon after it's announced in two weeks. Beta Software Program participants will get it a few weeks later.
So consider this the calm before the storm. You'll have tons of new feature (and bugs) to test soon!
