Apple seeded another round of beta versions for the macOS 10.12.2 Sierra, tvOS 10.1, and iOS 10.2. The news comes a week after the most previous beta versions were offered.
macOS 10.12.2
The third beta update for the macOS Sierra 10.12.2 was released to developers right before the final version comes out to the public, merely a few days after the Cupertino company outed the second 10.12.2 beta for the macOS and three weeks after the public release of the final macOS 10.12.1 version.
macOS Sierra is the latest Mac operating system available since September. It includes support for Siri, which is Apple's dedicated artificial intelligence assistant that was present only in the iPhone and iPad until recently; Apple Pay for the web; Apple Watch auto-unlocking; Universal Clipboard; Picture-in-Picture multitasking; improved iCloud Drive integration, and other small features.
Users can download the third beta update via the Apple Developer Center and through the software update mechanism in the Mac App Store despite the latter reportedly having issues updating apps for some users at the time of writing.
maOS Sierra 10.12.2 beta 3 includes new emoji and introduces new Unicode 9 characters such as the face palm, selfie, clown face, shark, owl, fox face, butterfly, pancakes, avocado, bacon, croissant, and many more. Additionally, there are new emoji based on professions in both male and female genders. Furthermore, Apple has updated the artwork of various existing emoji by adding more detail to make them look more realistic and less cartoonish.
Apart from the addition of new emoji, a few other changes could be seen, which include bug fixes and performance enhancements that address issues since the release of macOS Sierra 10.12.1.
No watchOS Update?
What is noticeably missing from the current set of beta updates was watchOS 3.1.1, which was not totally surprising since the version numbers would imply that iOS, tvOS and macOS beta 3 were minor updates targeting smaller bug fixes, without any eye-catching features.
iOS 10.2 And tvOS 10.1
Meanwhile, the most notable change from this current lineup of builds is the TV app running on tvOS 10.1, which arrived last week to devices running iOS 10 but took another whole week before arriving to Apple TV devices.
Thus far, no significant changes can be found in the iOS 10.2 beta 3 build except that the new TV app would entirely replace Videos. Luckily for users who prefer retaining the Videos app on their iPhone or iPad, they can still download the app back via the App Store. Additionally, Apple returned the Feedback app in iOS 10.2 beta 3.
For now, all the major and minor changes for the third set of betas have yet to be discovered.
