OS X 10.10.3 Yosemite beta 2 seeded to devs

OS X Yosemite 10.10.3 Beta 2

Alongside the just-released iOS 8.3 Beta 2, Apple on Monday also seeded the second beta of a forthcoming OS X 10.10.3 Yosemite software update to its registered Mac developers.

Carrying a build number of 14D87h, OS X Yosemite 10.10.3 beta 2 (like the first beta) bundles a pre-release version of Apple’s long-expected Photos for OS X application that will replace iPhoto and Aperture on Macs.

Registered Mac developers can apply OS X 10.10.3 Yosemite beta 2 through the Mac App Store’s Software Update mechanism. In addition to Photos for Mac, Apple is asking developers to specifically focus on Wi-Fi captive network support and screen sharing.

This release of 10.10.3 beta includes enhanced emoji support.

According to The Next Web, the new emoji palette available in OS X 10.10.3 beta 2 allows for racially diverse characters. Specifically, you can now click and hold on any emoji to change the skin tone. The same emoji are present in iOS 8.3 beta 2 as well and have been fully detailed by my colleague Jake in a separate post.

apple-diverse-emoji

Check out some new country flags, too!

country emojis

It’s also interesting that both new betas of iOS 8.3 and OS X 10.10.3 have replaced the watch emoji with a new Apple Watch emoji.

Apple Watch emoji

And here are a bunch of new family emojis to illustrate pretty much every scenario one can think of.

family emojis

For those wondering, these new and racially diverse emojis are not specific to Apple and have been standardized thanks to a skin tone modifier change in the Unicode Consortium specification which allows users to select the tone of compatible emoji.

Emoji design is vendor-specific though so while each new emoji does convey the same message across platforms, they are designed differently on Android, for example. Another example is the phone emoji, seen below, which Apple updated to match the iPhone 6 and the new iOS style.

Phone emoji

And if you had any doubts, the computer emoji has received a makeover and now shows an iMac image.

mac emoji

For those wondering, OS X 10.10.3 beta 2 isn’t available as a public beta release as of yet. You should keep in mind that the software still exhibits a lot of issues, including the following hiccups:

  • Some buttons and other UI elements may not appear correctly.
  • Imported edits from iOS devices may not appear correctly until the image is opened in Edit view.
  • Some images may be slow to display in Edit view if the photos have not yet been downloaded from iCloud Photo Library.
  • Animations when rotating photos in the Albums view may not appear correctly.
  • Dragging and dropping photos and videos from Photos to Mail may not work as expected.
  • In some cases, iCloud storage estimates provided after a user enables iCloud Photo Library may be larger than required when duplicate photos exist.
  • Library upgrade progress bar may not report the correct status.
  • Videos imported to Photos may show the wrong capture time in the Info panel. Capture time can be manually adjusted using Image-> Adjust Date and Time.
  • Images uploaded to iCloud Photo Library via iCloud.com may cause duplicates in your Photos library on your Mac.

In addition to iOS 8.3 beta 2 (build 12F5037c) and OS X 10.10.3 Yosemite beta 2, Apple has released a new beta of the Apple TV software and the matching Xcode 6.3 beta 2 (build 6D532l) with Swift 1.2, which can be downloaded through the company’s Dev Center portal.

The new Xcode includes updated SDKs for both iOS 8.3 beta 2 and OS X 10.10.3 beta 3 and requires a Mac running OS X 10.10. Xcode is Apple’s developer toolset for Mac, iPhone, iPad and Apple Watch development.

Also, it comes with Apple’s brand new crash reports service, which aggregates App Store and TestFlight logs into crash reports that will automatically download into Xcode.

“The enhanced Organizer window makes it easy to triage your crashes, jump directly to the offending code, and mark a crash as resolved. Learn more by reading Crashes Organizer Help,” reads a notice on Apple’s developer portal.

As mentioned before, the first beta of OS X 10.10.3 (build 14D87h) has brought out Photos for Mac while enabling a consolidated emoji picker with support for more diverse characters and 2-step verification for Google Accounts in System Preferences.

yosemite_google_2step

Photos for Mac is the missing link in Apple’s iCloud Photo Library strategy. The Mac app, which resembles the clean design of its iOS counterpart. lets you browse photos by time and location in Moments, Collections and Years views and navigate your library using Photos, Shared, Albums and Projects tabs.

It features basic photo-editing tools and includes support for purchasing photo prints and creating professional-quality photo books with simplified bookmaking tools, new Apple-designed themes and new square book formats.

photos-editing-100566811-large

Folks who’ve enabled iCloud Photo Library on their iOS device can store all of their photos and videos in iCloud, in their original format and in full resolution, and access them from their Mac, iPhone, iPad or iCloud.com with any web browser.

iCloud Photo Library is currently in beta so not everything works smoothly. For instance, Apple lists two known issues with using iOS 8.1.3 or earlier with Photos for OS X and iCloud Photo Library betas.

moments-photos-100566814-large

Firstly, your manually edited dates of photos and videos may revert to their original dates taken. And secondly, Photos for Mac may crash when folders containing albums are removed from Recently Deleted.

To avoid crashes, simply delete albums individually. Once iOS 8.3 and OS X 10.10.3 with Photos for Mac have been released for public consumption, iCloud Photo Library will exit beta.

We’ll be updating the post throughout the day with information about new features and enhancements. If you find other newsworthy tidbits, drop us a line at tips@iDownloadBlog.com.