Apple has released the first seed of iOS 7.1 beta (build number 11D5099e) to registered developers today. Check below for a comprehensive overview of changes and iOS 7.1 Release Notes below:

iOS 7.1 beta 1 includes a number of bug fixes and (seriously needed) performance enhancements. iPad includes a tweaked closing animation in the pinch-to-close gesture.

A few other changes include a new toggle for ‘dark keyboard’ in the accessibility settings and an option to upload ‘burst mode photos’ to Photo Stream for iPhone 5s users (Thanks Skylor and Dan!). Toggling ‘bold text’ no longer requires restarting your device as it has up to iOS 7.0.4 and can be found in the text size menu now in addition to the general accessibility menu. A new ‘auto HDR mode’ appears in the beta as well as flash indicators when auto flash exacts to activate.

Notification Center now features a new dialog when cleared and a tweaked button for clearing items (slightly easier). The new Yahoo! logo that appeared in Settings in iOS 7.0.4 last week has also made its appearance in Notification Center as well as Weather and Stocks. Flickr now features a gradient-less logo throughout the system.

As it is a beta, iOS 7.1 beta 1 is not without bugs of course (sound off by default to avoid driving you insane, but take a listen):

Apple released iOS 7.0.4 and iOS 6.1.5 publicly on Thursday of last week, and with iOS 7.1 officially shipping to developers today, we should expect to see it debut publicly relatively soon as well. Apple also released a developer update to Apple TV to improve iPad AirPlay performance.

  • Apple revamps design of iBooks and iTunes U for iOS 7 on iPad & iPhone (9to5mac.com)
  • Apple releases iOS 7.0.3: iCloud Keychain, iMessage fixes, sensor fixes, Touch ID improvements (9to5mac.com)
  • Some developer devices bricked as pre-release iOS 7 beta expires – fix available (9to5mac.com)
  • Apple finally updates Remote iPhone & iPad app for iOS 7 (9to5mac.com)

iOS SDK 7.1 provides support for developing iOS apps, and it includes the complete set of Xcode tools, compilers, and frameworks for creating apps for iOS and OS X. These tools include the Xcode IDE and the Instruments analysis tool, among many others.

With this software you can develop apps for iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch running iOS 7. You can also test your apps using the included iOS Simulator, which supports iOS 7. iOS SDK 7.1 requires a Mac computer running OS X v10.8.4 (Mountain Lion) or later.

This version of iOS is intended for installation only on devices registered with the Apple Developer Program. Attempting to install this version of iOS in an unauthorized manner could put your device in an unusable state.

For more information and additional support resources, visit http://developer.apple.com/programs/ios/.

Bug Reporting

To report any bugs not mentioned in the Notes and Known Issues section, use the Apple Bug Reporter on the Apple Developer website (http://developer.apple.com/bugreporter/). Additionally, you may discuss these issues and iOS SDK 7.1 in the Apple Developer Forums: http://devforums.apple.com. To get more information about iCloud for Developers, go to http://developer.apple.com/icloud.

Notes and Known Issues

The following issues relate to using iOS SDK 7.1 to develop code.

Bluetooth

Known Issue

32-bit apps running on a 64-bit device cannot attach to BTServer.

CFNetwork

Fixed in iOS 7.1 beta

Previously, if the server-side closed an HTTP request with TCP FIN without sending any bytes of HTTP header or HTTP body, NSURLConnection would synthesize an empty HTTP/1.1 200 OK response. This is now fixed, and the request will result in an error instead of a successful load with a synthesized response.

Notes

A new compatibility behavior has been added to address an issue where some web servers would send the wrong Content-Length value for “Content-Encoding: gzip” content. Previously, NSURLConnection and NSURLSession would send a “network connection was lost” / NSURLErrorNetworkConnectionLost (-1005) error in this situation.

The compatibility behavior applies only if the Content-Length value exactly matches the expanded gzip’d content. It won’t apply for “off by 1” or similar miscounting.

Core Text

Previously, text drawn with CTFrameDraw did not correctly place lines to account for the paragraphSpacing attribute of NSParagraphStyle. This has been addressed in iOS 7.1 beta.

Crash Logs

Crash logs will not appear in Diagnostics & Usage Data in Settings. The logs will still be available when synced off the device.

GLKit

If loaded with GLKTextureLoader, pngcrush images that have alpha were not unpremultiplied.

High Precision Timers

When sleeping or waiting for extremely precise time intervals, timers were delayed by up to 1 millisecond.

iTunes

Loading an iTunes Match library (or your purchased music history) may take much longer than expected, especially on larger libraries. If your library does not sync right away, please wait 30 minutes and try to access it again.

Multipeer Connectivity

The MCSessioninitWithPeer: method has now been implemented properly.

For more information on MCSession APIs, watch WWDC 2013: Nearby Networking with Multipeer Connectivity.

UIKit

Known Issues

If a UITextField or a UILabel that is baseline aligned with constraints has attributes that change after the constraints have been added, the layout may be incorrect. The exception to this is -setFont: on UILabel, which should work as expected.

Workaround: Avoid making changes in UITextField or UILabel after adding baseline-alignment constraints. If you must make changes, you should remove the constraints and then reapply them afterward. Note that this is a performance hit, so don’t do it unless it is necessary.

The backIndicatorTransitionMask from a storyboard or a xib will not be interpreted correctly at runtime.

Workaround: Set the backIndicatorTransitionMask in code.