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iOS 6 developer beta previewed in leaked photos, video

iOS 6 developer beta previewed in leaked photos, video

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Developers with access to Apple's iOS 6 beta have sent in impressions, photos, and video.

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iOS 6
iOS 6

We've just received photos and impressions from a number of tipsters alleging to have access to the developer beta of iOS 6 announced today at Apple's WWDC event in San Francisco; we're aggregating those tips here.

Starting with Maps, we're told that the 3D mode works with a two-finger swipe — push up to rotate up, down to rotate down to the ground, similar to the way Google has implemented it in Maps for Android. Rendered buildings seem to be buggy in this release and aren't consistently showing as they should — loading is slow. Data is being provided by TomTom, according to the app.

Apple has also built-in a privacy setting where apps will pop up to request access to location services, contacts, calendars, reminders, and photos. Individual apps can be managed in a new privacy section of the Settings app, we're told. The Facebook integration is present in this iOS 6 beta and we're told it's almost identical to Twitter in the sense it will update contact information and built-in apps take advantage of the share features.

Siri is now available on the iPad and we're told it works in a similar way to the existing implementation on the iPhone 4S. Siri also appears to be working in international markets like the UK, returning local results to queries.

If you're into video calling, good news: we've now had two people tell us that FaceTime works surprisingly well over 3G ("better than jailbreak tweaks," one says), which is odd considering how long Apple resisted the temptation to deploy it as anything other than a Wi-Fi service.

On the music front, there's a new "Late Night Mode" EQ setting (it's unclear what constitutes late night audio equalization, exactly, but we're eager to find out). The Passbook app, revealed for the first time today, has a starkly different appearance than the legacy built-in apps that could foreshadow a deeper UI redesign across the platform.

iOS 6 developer beta screenshots (iPhone)

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iOS 6 developer beta screenshots (iPad)

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