Apple has started to provide participants of its public beta program with the first builds of four of its milestone operating systems, including iOS 13, iPadOS, tvOS, and macOS Catalina.
The first wave of public beta builds can be picked up from the Apple Beta Software Program website to those signed up to take part in the testing scheme. The public versions usually follow a short time after their developer beta counterparts, though for major releases, not typically after the initial developer builds are issued.
Prior to Monday's release, and AppleInsider's hands on, Apple had already issued two rounds of developer betas, with the most recent being on June 17.
As with other public beta releases from Apple, it is usual to find the contents of the public test version to be functionally similar to that of the most recent developer beta.
Apple is also running developer betas for iOS 12.4, tvOS 12.4, watchOS 5.3, and macOS 10.14.6 at the same time as its milestone variants, with a public release of those betas likely to occur long before the major releases are distributed to users.
AppleInsider, and Apple itself, strongly recommend users don't install the betas on to "mission-critical" or primary devices, as there is the remote possibility of data loss or other issues. Instead, testers should install betas onto secondary or non-essential devices, and to make sure there are sufficient backups of important data before updating.
Find any changes in the new betas? Reach out to us on Twitter at @AppleInsider or @Andrew_OSU, or send Andrew an email at andrew@AppleInsider.com.
20 Comments
Call me a stickler, but I disagree with these public betas. IMHO, a general user shouldn't be allowed to have any kind of betas, period.
You can install the Public Beta on an external drive so as to not overwrite your release version OS. USB 3 SSDs are not very expensive.
Anybody seeing this available yet?