Apple has reportedly disabled the ability to create an icon shortcut to specific setting menus in iOS 5.1 beta.

The shortcuts were revealed earlier this month and quickly became a popular feature with iOS device owners. Designer Jeff Broderick created some beautiful icons with pre-made shortcuts which could be installed by visiting http://brdrck.me/settings on your device.

Now, iSpazio is reporting that the latest developer beta has disabled this functionality. It’s unclear why Apple would remove a perfectly simple and harmless shortcut and instead force users to turn to popular SBSettings utility which requires jailbreak.