Apple sends AppleSeed invitations for watchOS 6 beta testing

Coinciding with the provision of public beta versions of its milestone operating systems to users, Apple has started to send AppleSeed invitations to users for watchOS 6, giving the company another way to collect feedback before publicly releasing the final version to users.

Emails are starting to be sent out to users advising they are invited by Apple to join the AppleSeed program for watchOS 6. The email advises participants will be able to test out pre-release software, and for users to provide feedback to the company.

While Apple does operate a public beta program that anyone can join, AppleSeed requires people to be invited to take part, allowing Apple to be more selective in the kinds of feedback it can expect back. Participants are supplied with the use of a community discussion board, are sent questionnaires, and can use a Feedback Assistant app to report quality and usability issues directly to Apple.

The email invitation sent to potential participants for the AppleSeed program

Another big difference is that AppleSeed is covered by Apple's non-disclosure agreement, which limits what users are able to say to others about their experiences. There is also the possibility Apple could supply slightly different builds of its software to users via AppleSeed than the normal developer or public betas, including changes that it does not wish to publicly reveal.

The Apple Watch operating system, watchOS 6, is expected to reach the general public's wearable devices this fall, alongside iOS 13, iPadOS 13, tvOS 13, and macOS 10.15 Catalina.

6 Comments

jbdragon 2312 comments · 10 Years

About 5 years ago

I don't think so! No Beta anything on my Apple Watch. Something goes wrong, it's now bricked. There's no easy way to fix/recover from that.

lkrupp 10521 comments · 19 Years

jbdragon said:

I don't think so! No Beta anything on my Apple Watch. Something goes wrong, it's now bricked. There's no easy way to fix/recover from that.

As the article points out this beta is not public. It is by invitation only. watchOS has never had public betas.

Soli 9981 comments · 9 Years

lkrupp said:

jbdragon said:

I don't think so! No Beta anything on my Apple Watch. Something goes wrong, it's now bricked. There's no easy way to fix/recover from that.

As the article points out this beta is not public. It is by invitation only. watchOS has never had public betas.

I think his point stands with his "no beta anything" comment. I'm running the dev betas on my Watch and I understand that it would be huge PITA if this became bricked and I had to send it to Apple to reset. My Watch is only off when I bath so it would be a major inconvenience so I'd probably buy another instead of waiting a week to get it back.

eriamjh 1760 comments · 17 Years

jbdragon said:

I don't think so! No Beta anything on my Apple Watch. Something goes wrong, it's now bricked. There's no easy way to fix/recover from that.

Agreed. I saw a lot of that bricking with watchOS 2 and wanted to punch Cook (or someone at Apple) in the face for what happened to my series zero watch after watchOS 3.0 came out (they trashed a perfectly working watch) that never worked as well as the last 2.x release.

I don’t even want to update my series 4 watch because the upgrades ruin more features than they add or fix.

how about giving us a way to go back, Tim Apple?

No watch betas gonna happen here.

iqatedo 1811 comments · 21 Years

Soli said:

lkrupp said:

jbdragon said:

I don't think so! No Beta anything on my Apple Watch. Something goes wrong, it's now bricked. There's no easy way to fix/recover from that.

As the article points out this beta is not public. It is by invitation only. watchOS has never had public betas.

...My Watch is only off when I bath so it would be a major inconvenience so I'd probably buy another instead of waiting a week to get it back.

Have recently undergone surgery, I cannot exert myself too much and as a consequence my watch has had less than normal demand placed on it for monitoring exercise. As a result, it keeps charge for a couple of days. Not bad that 'bath time' is the only down-time. I jumped from a Gen-1 to the latest version, love it.