Apple continued its march toward a public release of iOS 6.1 last night with the release of the fifth beta version of the upcoming software. The beta's release was discovered by 9to5Mac. As usual, this beta is only made available to registered iOS developers, so those with a dev account can log in to Apple's developer page with their credentials and obtain the new software that way. iOS 6.1 beta 5 is compatible with the iPad 4, iPad mini, iPad 3, iPad 2, iPhone 5, iPhone 4S, iPhone 4, iPhone 3GS and both the fourth and fifth generation iPod touch models.
This new iOS 6.1 beta comes to us well over a month after iOS 6.1 beta 4 was released, which is a much longer period of time than registered developers had to wait between the releases of iOS 6.1 beta 3 and iOS 6.1 beta 4. Interestingly, iMore notes that iOS 6.1 beta 5 has some of the characteristics of a gold master (GM) build, like the lack of an expiration date. The GM build is one that's expected to be pushed to the public, so long as there aren't any major bugs found within. The Cupertino firm has not revealed when iOS 6.1 will be released to the public.
In other Apple news, 9to5Mac has discovered test pages for Apple products on the Staples website. Some examples include the Apple TV and Lightning to USB Camera Adapter, both of which feature "Test" in their product names on the site. Staples doesn't officially sell Apple products, but MacRumors claims to have recently gotten a tip that the retailer would soon begin doing so. There's no word on how wide a selection of Apple products that Staples might offer or when they'll actually begin selling them, but the appearance of these test pages do seem to suggest that Staples customers may soon be able to include some Apple wares along with their three-hole punches and boxes of toner.
UPDATE: A report from iDownloadBlog suggests that Apple could be planning to introduce a 128GB iOS device. The site notes that the "System Partition Padding" section of iOS 6.1 beta 5 contains an entry for "128" along with the other 8, 16, 32, and 64 entries. A screenshot of these listings can be found at the bottom of this post. iDownloadBlog mentions that the 128 listing isn't present in the iOS 6 firmware, though for some reason there's no 64 entry in the iOS 6 firmware either.
Via 9to5Mac (1), (2), MacRumors, Staples, iDownloadBlog
