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Yosemite Public Beta


Julia Falling

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Any of you going to give this a try? How about all of you who are already running the beta – any cautions for the rest of us?

 

EDIT: I didn't sign up for the public beta, but would like to hear more from you who are testing. Do you like what you see?

Edited by Julie Falling
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There was an issue with the 3rd developer preview that caused Accordance to crash when opening the library window (Nathan Parker reported on it here--although I might suggest his use of major was a bit of hyperbole ;) ).

 

That issue went away for me in the 4th preview, which I believe is what is being released in the beta program today. I haven't had some of the other random crashes in Accordance that Nathan described in the above-linked thread.

 

I've had trouble with folder icons disappearing, but a reinstall today fixed that.

 

A handful of programs have not worked on and off with the previews.

 

I would definitely say not to install the beta if you only have one Mac. I'm down to one Mac and I installed anyway, only to regret it afterwards. Each build has naturally seen improvement, but I've been part of Apple's appleseed program for a number of years, and Yosemite was initially the buggiest OS X beta I've used. I think that's because Yosemite is a very significant update compared to some of the recent updates.

 

If you only have one Mac, I would suggest proceeding with great caution.

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Did Apple have a public beta for Mavericks? I'm wondering if there might be a wider testing this time so that the general release is less buggy?

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I thought I remembered reading somewhere that this is the first time they've done a public beta for OSX.

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Did Apple have a public beta for Mavericks? I'm wondering if there might be a wider testing this time so that the general release is less buggy?

 

No. I can't remember the last time Apple had a public beta. They've had a private invitation-only Appleseed program for a number of years that I've been a part of for the last few versions of OS X.

 

 

I think your hypothesis is correct. There are a lot of changes and new features in Yosemite, so I'm guessing they are thinking a public beta will help iron out some of the problems before the final release. Or maybe they are being like Microsoft, which generally has a public beta of Windows :-)

Come to think about it, there was a limited public beta for OS X 10.0. That may have been the last time.

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Please, please – I don't want Apple to be like Microsoft. I don't think that word is allowed on this forum, is it? :unsure:

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My late 2008 aluminum MacBook keeps chugging along, but slowly, so I'm sorely tempted to put Yosemite on it to see if it handles it better than Mavericks! I know... not a good idea--it's our primary machine.

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My mid 2009 MacBook Pro chugs along slowly as well. I am tempted to install the Yosemite public beta as I am a tech junkie and love having the latest of anything ... I doubt that my machine will run better (Mavericks and Lion did not improve the speed at all).

 

It is encouraging that Nathan's post might have been hyperbolic.

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My computer got significantly slower after installing Mavericks. That can only change for the better, right? At least, I hope.

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Abram – One wonders. There was one upgrade, I think it was Leopard —> Snow Leopard, where I gained 20G of space on my HD plus improved performance. There's no telling.

 

The only Mac that ever really gave me any issues was that dual G5-space heater combo. (The machine generated so much heat that, when all the fans kicked in, the heat would just pour out of it. I had to back away from my desk.) It also gave me my first experience with kernel panic. Boy, was it noisy. Sounded like a jet engine in my study. Had a whole screen full of messages in lots of languages.

 

I upgraded the OS with each new release of OS X until I could go no further, the Power PC processor being the limiting factor. One of those upgrades all but eliminated the kernel panic. But when I was 3 OSes behind my laptop on my desktop, I got the Mac mini and we sold the G5 on eBay. I will admit that I was not sorry to see it go. The Intel processor has been a huge improvement.

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Ah, see--that's what I need. To gain space on the HD and better performance from an OSX upgrade! One can hope....

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My thought about why Apple is providing the public beta is to get wider feedback than just developers, especially with the significant UI changes. That way they can fix things beforehand rather than after like they had to do with iOS 7. I'll wait until it is ready, but for those involved Macworld has posted an article of things one should know.

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Just jumped on the Yosemite public beta wagon. Although not thoroughly tested, Accordance seems to work fine on Yosemite. I, for one, do like the flatter look which was introduced in IOS 7 (which will continue with IOS 8).

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