iOS 7 Beta 4 Release Delayed for Weeks?

According to the newest iOS 7 rumor, the Beta 4 update could be delayed for “weeks” after a major security breach in Apple’s Development Center.

Another day another iOS 7 Beta rumor. Today, reports surfaced that iOS 7 Beta 4 could be delayed for “weeks” after developers turned to Twitter to express their concerns with Apple’s beta program.

Apple has been churning out updates to iOS 7, the operating system that still hasn’t been released to the public, on a schedule of about two weeks per beta. Most importantly, the newer beta updates have been vastly better than its’ predecessors — fixing a number of glitches, bugs, and annoyances found by developers and avid Apple fans willing to purchase the $99 developer’s license.

But, with the abrupt closing of the Apple Developer Page, things have taken a turn for the grim. Developers have been turning to Twitter to tell their followers how unlikely a Beta 4 release is in the near future.

I got a feeling we're not going to be seeing new iOS 7 betas for at least a couple weeks. http://t.co/KVLEwBQocb

— Paul Haddad (@tapbot_paul) July 24, 2013

Hopefully, the Developer Center comes back up with a new iOS 7 beta before the current one expires.

— Marco Arment (@marcoarment) July 24, 2013

The Apple Developer page is partially functioning, and Apple has revealed the services they’ll start fixing first.

We apologize for the significant inconvenience caused by our developer website downtime. We’ve been working around the clock to overhaul our developer systems, update our server software, and rebuild our entire database. While we complete the work to bring our systems back online, we want to share the latest with you.

We plan to roll out our updated systems, starting with Certificates, Identifiers & Profiles, Apple Developer Forums, Bug Reporter, pre-release developer libraries, and videos first. Next, we will restore software downloads, so that the latest betas of iOS 7, Xcode 5, and OS X Mavericks will once again be available to program members. We’ll then bring the remaining systems online. To keep you up to date on our progress, we’ve created a status page to display the availability of our systems.

So, while iOS 7 and OS X Mavericks beta updates are high up on Apple to-do list, it’s not the most important thing. It should be noted that Apple did release a OS X Mavericks update during the outage, but the update could have been prepared before the major security breach.

But what’s the likelihood that we can see an iOS 7 Beta 4 any time soon? It’s hard to say. It would behoove Apple to release the update as soon as its prepared, since the delay has already ignited some panic from users and developers alike. That being said, obviously Apple wouldn’t want to rush out the update riddled with security flaws. So, while Apple should be trying to crank out the update as soon as possible, they should emphasize on fixing the security flaws before they release the update.