Why You Shouldn’t Install the OS X Yosemite Public Beta
Apple is letting non-developers download a public beta of OS X Yosemite to try it out. Should you do this?Later today, Apple will open the doors to one million users, allowing them to download the public beta of OS X 10.10 Yosemite. This is the first public beta program of OS X that Apple has run since the first release of Mac OS X. At that time, Mac OS X was cutting edge, and the public beta of Mac OS X was meant as much as a showcase as an actual beta, and it was not free: it cost $29.95. Surprising that Apple made users pay to give them feedback.
Today’s release – you can sign up here, if you really want to – is a sign of Apple’s new openness. In allowing one million users to download the public beta – as well as the hundreds of thousands of people with paid developer accounts – Apple is banking on getting feedback both on reliability and features.
But how much attention will Apple pay to user feedback? The company already has trouble fixing the many bugs that developers report. Will they make any interface changes based on user comments? I highly doubt it. What they will do, however, is silently collect information about crashes, and, perhaps, the way people use certain features.
But is it worth your while, as an average user – that is, not a developer or journalist – to download the public beta? Probably not. Sure, you’ll get a first look at the next iteration of OS X, but this comes at a cost. This is a beta; as such, you MUST NOT USE IT ON A PRODUCTION MAC. It is unstable, and unreliable, so if you do use it on your main Mac, you may lose data. To run it safely, you should install it on an external hard drive, or an old Mac, and not entrust any important data to it.
With this in mind, is it really worth the time it will take to download and install? You’ll be able to use plenty of apps: web browsers, email clients, Messages and Twitter apps. But you need to be very careful about doing any real work on a beta operating system. If you use your Mac professionally, you simply shouldn’t spend time with the public beta.
It’s neat to get a first glimpse at a new operating system. But most users don’t really need this, so think carefully whether you do. If you decide to install it, make sure to do it safely.
“Surprising that Apple made users pay to give them feedback.”
Not really. The surprising part was that users paid.
It depends. If your business depends on OS X, it’s money well spent to identify and report issues ahead of official release.
Well, that wasn’t the case back when the first version of Mac OS X was released. But, now, if that is the case, you can get a $99 developer account, and you’d have access to four beta releases already. And there are people who need that.
Did my mom write this article? It’s the tech equivalent of “why don’t you take your coat with you? It may get cold…”
I installed the beta on an external hard drive a few weeks ago and it’s been rock solid for me. I’m now using it 100% of the time, including for work. Obviously you should have a backup in place, but there’s no reason to be alarmist about it.
I’ve been using the public beta for about eight hours now, and I’ve only had two or three minor issues (Safari hung, Safari crashed, I couldn’t click a web form properly). The biggest drawback so far is that a lot of Yosemite’s selling points are to do with iiOS 8 integration, and of course there’s no public beta for that. Anyway, it mostly looks great on my spare 27″ iMac. Simple web browsing and music playing don’t stress it enough to do anything disastrous. So, no regrets.
Did you fix the safari problem?
It’s not meant for devs or journalists. It is meant to find issues by putting it in the hands of a lot of USERS. Devs have their own, mere frequently updated release to test their software on and journalists are just blowing smoke until there is a final release to get traffic to their posts.
The beta is free. And I am just a normal user for mac and I have had only one problem. That some of the features are not avalible like instant hotspot. And your probley not Likely to loose any data. If you do oh should have it backed up
Chicken Little wrote this article.
Yosemiti has been very unstable on my iMAC, Keynote invariably hangs when I try to do anything with Shapes or Master-Page edit. Safari crashes most often !! Anything and everything is much slower than Mavericks. Unfortunately I downloaded and I don’t know how to go back !! Need to figure out.