Apple updates all the things – iOS, iPad, Mac dev betas ship

New developer betas ship, bring translation, web apps and more

Big news in the Apple-verse as the company has released new developer betas for macOS Big Sur, iOS 14, iPad OS 14, watchOS 7 and tvOS 14.

If you are a registered developer you can download and install these new betas today. The big news seems to be introduction of support for Web Extensions and Translation in Safari and multiuser and PiP support on Apple TV.

All iPhone and iPad apps will now be offered on Mac App Store

Before we take a glance for anything new and significant in these betas, it may be worth noting another news nugget to emerge from the company, which is now telling developers:

“All newly created and existing compatible iPhone and iPad apps will be made available on Mac. Your compatible apps will be published on the Mac App Store on Apple Silicon Macs unless you edit their availability.”

In other words, hundreds of thousands of apps will soon be made available to Apple Silicon Macs. Despite the fact that those Macs are at present only in the hands of developers. Which is a pretty big hint that Intel Macs for the rest of us aren’t so far away.

(As Apple promised).

What’s inside the betas?

Everyone using the betas as released so far have praised them for their stability. Not had time to really get to grips with what’s new in the betas, but selected highlights follow:

• Introduction of support for Web Extensions in Safari, so existing Chrome and Firefox extensions can be converted. Experimental HTTP/3 support is also available.
• Webpage Translation is now available in the U.S. and Canada.
• CarPlay keyboard support for over 100 additional languages
• Picture in Picture on tvOS.
• Multiuser support for gaming on Apple TV.
• QuickPath now supports swiping English words on the Simplified Chinese Pinyin keyboard.

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