Apple Releases iOS 4.2 Beta 1

Great new, folks! Apple has just seeded the first beta of iOS 4.2 for iPad and iPhone to developers. Head over the developer portal to download it now!

The iPad download is a 514 MB .dmg file, while the iPhone 4 is a 617 MB one. Come back to this post as we’ll continually update it once we get more details.

Update #1: The iPad restore was very fast in iTunes, less than 3 minutes. More optimizations in 4.2?

The multitasking animation is the same of iOS 4, very nice. I can confirm the multitasking tray looks the same of iOS 4 for iPhone, too. Uploading screenshots to this post in a few minutes. We’re also hearing that 4.2 should allow the iPad to have Midi output.

Update #2: Basing on this new class name:

GKFriendRequestComposeViewController

It seems like you can now add Game Center friends in 3rd party apps as well. Yay!

Update #3: Here are the first screenshots of 4.2 running on the iPad:

Update #4: Apple has changed the functionality of the external rotation toggle - it’s a mute switch now. If you want to lock rotation, use the multitasking bar.

Update #5: You can put up to 20 apps in a folder. Pretty great.

Background for music apps lives: