“After the announcements earlier this week, we’re pretty stoked about both iOS 8 and Yosemite, but as with most of Apple’s betas, it’s pretty hard to recommend that anyone who isn’t a developer check them out,” Thorin Klosowski writes for Lifehacker.
“Over the years, Apple has repeatedly shown us that installing beta versions of iOS is always a bad idea. They’re buggy, unstable, hard to use, drain your battery life, and make a bunch of your apps unusable,” Klosowski writes. “iOS 8 is no different… Yyou won’t have access to most of the big features until it officially launches. Healthkit won’t be too useful until other apps tap into it and the same goes for Homekit. Likewise, Continuity will be useless until Yosemite is released. Other big features, like the new photo management tool, third party keyboards, family sharing, or even the new messaging features won’t be useful until iOS 8 is public.”
“For OS X Yosemite, Apple’s giving everyone a chance to be a beta tester this summer. If you’re not a developer, you are probably better off waiting for the public test.,” Klosowski writes. “Apple’s a relatively careful company when it comes to their desktop operating systems, so while bugs will certainly be around in the public beta, they’re probably not going destroy your system. Developer betas are a lot different though. Since the general assumption with a beta is that you know what you’re doing, these early betas tend to be pretty buggy and unstable. More importantly for you, Yosemite isn’t feature-complete right now.”
The full article, with instructions on how to partition your drive and install Yosemite safely, here.
Avoid any Beta if you cannot tolerate your device taking some steps back in terms of functionality and over stability. Wait for the final version as it too gets 3 to 6 updates within the first few months in order to right all the shortcomings.
Totally agree.
Especially if your earning a living from your devices.
Only install betas on non essential hardware!
VMware anyone? Look get the beta and play with it. Hell report back some bugs the more people that do the better the release will be. There are great virtual machine options from commercial to freeware. Get one, install it and build a vm and install the new Mac OS. Help Apple make things better before a release to the public. Make a difference and have some fun. Be an expert before everyone else.
I am waiting until the official releases have proven stable. Both IOS 7 and Mavericks gave me major problems, so am hoping for a cleaner releases this time round.
Or the first or second update to the official release?
I can reveal that two of the betas of 10.9.3 were entirely non-functional on my test Mac. I had to clean reinstall 10.9.2 after attempting the installs. That’s incredibly annoying and time consuming. Such is beta testing.
I only test on a dedicated partition volume. NEVER on a work volume.
I maaaaay have tested out the beta of iOS 7 when I shouldn’t have, but it actually worked out fine for me. And I was prepared to handle lots of questions that kids in my classes had when they started downloading iOS 7. Honestly, I think iOS 7 performed better for me in beta than it did in the public release, as weird as that sounds. I know my battery life certainly was better running a few of the beta versions.
That said, it is highly recommended that you not download betas if you have no idea what you’re doing. You might end up just fine, like me, or you may end up causing some serious damage.
This go-round, I’m definitely waiting for iOS 8 and OS X Yosemite to be made public.
Any nitwit that installs a beta on their primary drive/partition is asking for it and will get what they deserve. I am going to use a USB3 32GB flash drive and install the beta on that with my MBA. Now just have to wait until Apple makes it available for us ordinary users.
Back in the good old days I use to get copies of OS X builds to get an early taste of the new OS. It was a lot of fun and usually the golden master was available a few weeks before the official release. The key is having a spare drive, partition or even machine. Never install over your current setup since something will go wrong. The problem is that my laptop has a small ssd drive and space is at a premium. So I may have to skip Iida but it is always fun to see how that OS is developing.
Beta testing is testing. I don’t have much time to test but I will file bug reports on released software. I have 0 interest in participating in beta software testing. I simply do not have time for it.
Uh, no. I always wait until the first or second update to install a new OS, especially after the releases of iOS 7 and OSX 9.
You should have got 1 star, plenty of people/companies do the same.
It’s not that easy to undo an iOS update.
As mentioned in many of the posts up above, you don’t need to use your primary drive/partition to evaluate a new version of OS X.
Got my Yosemite booting off an external drive. Not bad so far.
ADVICE: I you install Yosemite beta, restart one more time after the install is finished. I ran into a giant pile of quirky problems immediately after installation that ALL went away with another restart. I’m advising Apple to make the extra restart automatic and mandatory.
Without blowing up the NDA for Yosemite, I would like to express this opinion: If Yosemite was a theme provided by a theming application, such as Flavours, I’d name the theme ‘KINDERGARTEN’. That’s how much regard I have for it after playing in it for a day. Some of it is GREAT! But then there’s the graphics redesign…
Q: ‘Do you know your colors, Derek?’
A: ‘Yes I do teacher. Can we graduate to something visually interesting now, PLEASE teacher? Flat colors are boring.’
Without violating my NDA, the look of Yosemite don’t get in the way of discovering its functionality or its ability to run our apps. Every one of us found the graphic look very appealing, especially the improved typography. Yes, there are many things we don’t like. but I can’t remember a pre-release that didn’t evoke the same response.
WHAT improved typography? Helvetica?
No, three poorly drawn colored dots of red, yellow and green with OFF-center drawings inside when you hover are NOT appealing. They’re kindergarten, as I pointed out. I wish I could point out what they did to Safari in v8, but I can’t.
The frosted glass effect is, however, brilliant and very welcome.
As for my caring about what any group response is to anything, forget it. I have very little faith in mob-think ever. Or hadn’t you noticed?