OS X 10.7.2 and iCloud betas suggest impending release
Apple has released new developer builds of OS X 10.7.2 and iCloud, which suggests the updates will be available to the public sooner rather than later.
Apple is ramping up development of OS X 10.7.2 and iCloud, which are both slated for release anytime this month. Today Apple issued yet another build of both the upcoming OS update and iCloud to developers for testing, just a little over a week since its last build release. The short time between builds suggests Apple is nearly ready to release the OS updates, implying iCloud may be available earlier in the month rather than later; however, we will wait and see.
Beside the new iCloud features, we are looking forward to these updates in hopes that they will fix a few outstanding bugs in OS X Lion, including the MacBook Pro black-screen bug that a number of users have noticed. While this is likely a hardware malfunction, for many systems the issue was not triggered in Snow Leopard, so if Apple can reimplement the way Snow Leopard handles the graphics hardware on these systems then that may be all that's needed for most people.
In addition to the black-screen bug, a new vulnerability in LDAP server authentication was found that may allow Lion systems on LDAP-enabled networks to log in with any credentials (even nonexistent usernames) by supplying a blank password. This issue is a more serious security flaw that hopefully will be addressed in OS X 10.7.2.
When OS X 10.7.2 and iCloud are finally released, other programs such as iPhoto and Aperture may also see updates to enhance their functionality with the new online services, so if you plan on updating, be prepared to back up your photo libraries if you do not already use Time Machine or another automatic backup system.
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