iOS 4.3 iPad Multi-Touch Gestures Just A Preview

So here’s an interesting turn of events. Remember the fancy new iPad gestures we showed you last week when the first beta of iOS 4.3 was seeded to developers? Well, it seems they won’t be available in the final release contrary to what we all believed.

With tonight’s release of the second beta, an interesting tidbit was spied deep in its release notes. It appears the gestures were never meant for public consumption and were there as a developer preview, which explains why Xcode was needed to activate them.

This beta release contains a preview of new multitasking gestures for iPad. You can use four or five fingers to pinch to the Home Screen, swipe up to reveal the multitasking bar, and swipe left or right between apps. This feature will not be enabled in iOS 4.3 for customers, but we are providing this preview to gather input on how these gestures work with your apps.

After installing the latest beta the gestures are still accessible, so Apple at least so far, hasn’t removed them completely. Perhaps gestures will be held back for a major point-0 release in the future, or perhaps be part of the iPad 2 announcement expected in the coming months.

Either way, remember folks: there’s a reason these things are betas!

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