Four Lessons from an Apple Public beta Tester
I'm clearly part of the "early adopter" part of the population. I bought the first iPhone within weeks of it being released - no standing in long lines, but still early in the initial release. Before Apple began their Public beta program, I would routinely upgrade to the new Mac OS X or iOS the night of or the next day of its release. When Apple launched the Public beta program with Mac OS X Yosemite, I enrolled both my iMac 27" (mid-2011) and my MacBook Pro (late-2013) and participated in the beta - not in a separate partition - not with any special preparation or backup - and on both computers, almost simultaneously. This somewhat cavalier approach worked fine for Yosemite and El Capitan, but it all fell apart with macOS Sierra beta 3 and iOS 10 beta 3 on my iPhone 6. macOS beta 1 and beta 2 worked "OK" on both computers - they were a little slow, some calendar items with Exchange would not sync properly, and lots of spinning "beachballs", but, it was useable and these problems were not unexpected in a beta test. beta 3 was distributed while I was in Atlanta attending a conference and my assumption was that it would correct some of the problems in the first two betas. I upgraded my MacBook Pro with no issues, but iOS 10 beta 3 "bricked" my iPhone 6. So... now I'm away from home, at a conference, where I've been using my phone extensively as a hotspot and to stay connected with colleagues, and now all I have is a very expensive paperweight. After about 24-hours of trying to get iOS beta 3 to load properly, I finally found the information online about how to rollback to iOS 9.3.4. This got the phone working again, but the photos that had been taken since the beta upgrade had been lost. Fortunately, many of them had been stored in messages sent to others, so they were recoverable. Upon returning home from the conference, since I had no problems with macOS Sierra beta 3 on my MacBook Pro, I upgraded my iMac. macOS beta 3 had almost the same effect on my iMac as iOS 10 beta 3 had had on my iPhone - it effectively created a 27" "paperweight" on my desk. Constant spinning "beachballs", unable to open applications, unable to open Preferences, and even unable to view About This Mac... After multiple restarts, forced shutdowns, trying to roll back to El Capitan, and over six hours on the phone with four Apple Service Representatives, we got it rolled back to Sierra beta 1, re-downloaded all the App Store apps, and decided to wait for a couple more beta iterations before upgrading again. With beta 5 and 6 now installed, my iMac is stable again and working quite well. Based upon this experience, here are four lessons for anyone interested in participating in the Apple Public beta program: 1. Don't include your iPhone in the beta test. We use our phones for too many daily activities to risk having it not work. Communicating with colleagues and family; taking pictures; responding to emails; surfing the Internet; or serving as a hotspot. The iPhone is too integral to daily personal and business life to be included in your beta testing - choose another iOS device. 2. Don't upgrade your iPhone to the next beta release while you're at a conference. If you decide to disregard the first recommendation, then don't upgrade your iPhone to the next beta while you are at a conference. Wait until you get home and you have the entire weekend to fix it - ...if it goes bad. 3. Do create a separate partition on your Mac to run the Public beta. Most industry magazines and websites strongly recommend creating a separate partition and running the new macOS in a protective environment. When the main computer in your house stops working, it's never good when your spouse asks, "Isn't that the computer where all of our important files and photos are located?" 4. Do include the Application folder in your Time Machine backup. It was easy enough to reinstall applications purchased from the App Store, but applications such as Microsoft Office had to be reinstalled using the discs, which takes longer and is more frustrating than if they had been included in the Time Machine backup.
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