Apple has begun sending email notices asking its registered Mac developers to submit their OS X Mavericks-optimized apps. The timing of the communique is especially eyebrow-raising given the October 22 media event invites went out today as “we still have a lot to cover”.
Jumping ahead of oneself, one might conclude this signals an imminent Mavericks release. In reality, it’d clearly make more sense to release Mavericks alongside the refreshed Mac notebooks.
For what it’s worth, a source that stepped forward this morning has pinpointed an October 24 or 25 release date for the upcoming Haswell-based MacBook Pros…
A notice on Apple’s Dev Center reveals Apple is now soliciting developers for OS X Mavericks-ready apps:
Make sure your app takes advantage of the great new features in OS X Mavericks when the world’s most advanced desktop operating system becomes available to millions of customers later this fall.
Download OS X Mavericks GM seed and Xcode 5.0.1 GM seed, now available on the Mac Dev Center. Build your apps with these latest seeds, then test and submit them to the Mac App Store.
According to Apple-provided stats valid on October 15, some 97 percent of new apps and 98 percent of updates to existing apps were reviewed in the last five business days.
Apple started training its AppleCare support staff on OS X Mavericks earlier this month. At any rate, we’re expecting to hear more about Mavericks availability during the media event on October 22.
As you know, Apple previewed Mavericks at its summer developers conference back in June. Eight developer previews later, the desktop operating system has reached a Golden Master stage.
Mavericks focuses on power management and under-the-hood performance improvements on Mac portables and contains end-user improvements such as better handling of multi-monitor setups, as well as new native apps like iBooks (below) and Maps (top of post).
Other noteworthy treats: improved notifications handling (read an alert on your iPhone and it gets automatically marked as read on your Mac, and vice versa), FaceTime/Messages contact blocking (already present in iOS 7), iCloud Keychain syncing (removed from iOS 7, but hopefully coming back), Finder Tabs and Tags (awesome!), a bunch of Safari improvements (can you say ultra-fast scrolling?) – and much more.
If Lion and Mountain Lion are anything to go by, OS X Mavericks should be priced under $20 and released exclusively as a digital download through the Mac App Store.
And while you count the remaining days until the software’s public availability, Apple’s already hard at work on developing iOS 8 and OS X 10.10 code-named Syrah.
Who will be installing Mavericks?