Until Apple’s Developer Center was taken down due to a security breach, the Cupertino company was steadily rolling out new iOS 7 betas every other Monday — and it appears that trend is set to continue now that everything’s back to normal.
Sources familiar with Apple’s plans say that we can expect iOS 7 beta 6 to arrive next week, ahead of a Gold Master release on Friday, September 5.
“In line with our earlier exclusive report on Apple’s plans for its iOS 7 beta software, we can now confirm that the final beta software release for developers will take place next week,” writes Jonathan Geller of Boy Genius Report. “Our sources have not confirmed which day, though Monday makes the most sense as it has been the typical release day in the past.”
iOS 7’s release schedule was fairly easy to predict before the Dev Center outage, but that clearly messed with Apple’s release plans. iOS 7 beta 4 came on Monday, July 29, while beta 5 came just a week later on Tuesday, August 6. We thought maybe we would see another beta this week, but it looks like we’ll have to wait a little longer for it.
After next week’s beta 6 update, BGR’s source expects iOS 7’s Gold Master release to be seeded to “employees and partners” for testing on Friday, September 5. Providing there are no issues with this version, this will be the release that’s made available to the public sometime later next month.
We don’t expect to see any major changes in the next iteration of iOS 7; Apple is likely to focus on bug fixes and performance improvements instead. The first devices to run iOS 7 out of the box will likely be the iPhone 5S and the low-cost iPhone 5C, which are expected to make their debut at an Apple event September 10.
