Apple seeds second beta of iOS 5 to devs

Apple this afternoon made available a second beta of iOS 5 to its developers. It's the first update Apple's provided to the upcoming operating system since taking the wraps off it at the company's annual developers conference earlier this month.

Besides bug fixes to the first beta, the new version of the software brings the Wi-Fi Sync feature to the Mac. In order to use the feature, developers need to use a beta version of iTunes 10.5 as well as OS X 10.6.8, which Apple released yesterday, or the latest developer preview of Lion.

Apple's wireless sync feature transfers information between iOS devices and computers running Apple's iTunes software. The feature requires the iOS device to be connected to power, as well as be on the same wireless network as the computer in order for it to sync content.

Apple has said it will release iOS 5 to users this fall. The company typically seeds several beta versions of its major software releases to developers ahead of time to work out any bugs and give the developers time to integrate new features and APIs into their applications.