You Can Now Run Beta Versions of OS X—For Free

redletterdave (2493036) writes "Apple on Tuesday announced the OS X Beta Seed Program, which allows anyone to download and install pre-release Mac software for the sake of testing and submitting feedback before the public launch. Until Tuesday, Apple charged users $99 a year to test out new OS X software—doing so required a paid-up developer account. (Testing new iPhone software still requires a separate developer account for another $99 a year.) Now, much the same way new OS X software is now totally free to download, it's also free to try out. All you need is an Apple ID to sign up."

Comments

Re:Toot little too late

[botfap]

please explain how the hard profit percentage has anything to do with the eating everyone else? apart from that your figure of 45% is nonsense unless its from before 2004 (earliest I could find figures for), I've just gone and looked through apples own figures for divisional profit and they are not even close to your 45% figure apart from iphones and iphones are rapidly losing worldwide market share.

beta tester now?

[blindbat]

I feel like I've been running betas since Lion.

Re:beta tester now?

[botfap]

OS X 10.6.8 The last properly stable version, unfortunately apple wont secure this OS anymore so our IT dept is slowly transitioning us to Ubuntu which is actually a lot lot better than we had feared. Its still not OS X but then neither is 10.8, its a fisher price toy interface to an OS.

Re:beta tester now?

[immaterial]

IIRC this tends to be caused by misbehaving kernel extensions (old ones that are not compatible with ML). Blackberry sync driver, logmein driver, sometimes HP's shitty printer drivers, etc. Check /System/Library/Extensions/ for old cruft.

Re:beta tester now?

[immaterial]

I disagree - memory compression has made Mavericks run much better at 4GB than either of the Lions in my anecdotal experience.

To the GP umafuckit, check the hard drive in that mini carefully; in my experience strange OS X slowness is often a sign of a dying hard drive (I've seen this probably a dozen times on various clients' computers). OS X is annoyingly sensitive to hard drive issues.

Re:iShould have read

[Anonymous Coward]

iWould.

Good luck

[namgge]

Good luck with this Apple, but in my experience the bug reports and feedback you'll get from Joe Public will be next to worthless. Don't waste your time on them; concentrate on what paid-up developers are telling you about your betas and fix the issues they identify first, please.

Re:Good luck

[Bogtha]

in my experience the bug reports and feedback you'll get from Joe Public will be next to worthless

Bug reports and feedback aren't the only valuable things that can come out of this. If an application crashes for a significant number of users at a particular point, it makes it easier to prioritise. It also makes it easier to detect problems that occur with real-world data and system rather than test data.

Re:Good luck

[SethJohnson]

Apple doesn't care about the 'bug reports'... They're looking at kernel dumps and other crash reports automatically submitted by the users' computers. From there, they can reach out to third-party developers with suggestions on how they can update their software to work on the next OS release.

This is more to help third-party developers than to help Apple developers. In the closed beta, it's common for many third-party apps to fall through the cracks if they don't have a large enough user-base to have some participants in the closed beta.

New OS X is free*

[damn_registrars]

As best I can tell, OS X is free to download only if you already have OS X. I don't see any way that someone who doesn't already have a very recent version of OS X can download it for free.

Re:New OS X is free*

[psergiu]

But you already got the old OS X for free when you bought your mac. So the new one is double-free :)

Oh, you want to install-it onto a uncool PC ? You dirty, double crossing, good for nothing, two timing software pirate hacker ...

Re:New OS X is free*

[EvanED]

To be fair, Hackintoshes show that there's no technical reason why OS X would be useful on computers other than a Mac. It's valid to point out that the licencing restrictions on OS X are still in play.

Re:New OS X is free*

[damn_registrars]

I bought a bike at Walmart for $200 yesterday. Middle of the road price for a Walmart bike. I had someone take it down and look at it for me before I left, he acknowledged that whoever put it together must have been a total idiot because the seat was loose. He adjusted it...

Next thing I know, I'm in the local bike shop looking at $600-1300 bikes while I wait and paying $10 for an adjustment because the seat is still loose, the front brake is rubbing, and the rear brake doesn't stop, dealing with some guy who doesn't want to deal with me because I paid 1) not enough, to 2) someone else, for 3) probably a decent bike if it wasn't put together by total idiots.

I used to work in a bike shop likely not too different from the one you describe. I can tell you, there is a huge difference between the components on the BSO (bike-shaped object) that you purchased at WalMart and the bikes you had in front of you at the bike shop. There is a reason why the WalMart bike was $200 and the ones at the shop were more, and it has to do with the quality of every component on the bike. This isn't a comparison between VW and Audi, this is a comparison between Porsche and a cheap skateboard. The components on the BSO are all Chinese made and lack not only the mechanical precision but also the ability to make adjustments that the better bike shop quality components have. I have seen BSOs from WalMart and others come in with brakes that could not be safely adjusted because they were of such poor manufacture.

And that isn't even getting to the frames. The BSOs are almost without exception made to only one size per model, which is seldom an appropriate size for the buyer (particularly an adult buyer). The frames themselves are poorly made as well of inferior alloys - both in terms of weight and durability - when compared to even the least expensive bike you can get at a bike shop.

Seriously, no adult should ever buy a bike for themselves at a big box (Target, WalMart, KMart, Toys R Us) retailer. If you wanted to stick to a $200 budget you would have been vastly better served by searching your local craigslist where you could have easily purchased a quality bike, in the correct size for you, for that amount of money. You could have checked ebay as well and come out better there, too.

If you just purchased that BSO yesterday my advice to you is go return it tonight and find a bike elsewhere. You won't get your bike shop fees back but you'll still be way better off.

Re:New OS X is free*

[spire3661]

There is no LEGAL licensing restriction that prohibits you from building a Hackintosh. Trying to sell hackintoshes is another matter.

Re:New OS X is free*

[UnknowingFool]

All of these Macs are at least 5 years old. Some of them are 10 years old. Seriously you can't run the latest Linux on these machines either without major customizations.

Re:Toot little too late

[Sockatume]

The Register is re-reporting Asymco's figures, which are just taken from public accounting information.

You mean I can work for Apple for free?

[Kardos]

Sign me up!

Re:WANT!

[93 Escort Wagon]

You can use another partition for the beta.

Does that work for Slashdot as well?

As much as I like Macs...

[wjcofkc]

To get it out of the way, I am not an Apple hater but I am not a fanboy either. I have a MacBook, but Linux based OS' run my main systems. My thoughts:

There was once a time where every release of OS X was gutted relative to the previous version, sometimes eliminating upwards of 10 or more gigabytes of code. OS X only got faster with each release. I am not sure where that came to an end, but the last few release have been steadily slowing down my MacBook.

I have also sadly watched the interface become more bogged down and convoluted over the last few years. It used to be the height of simplicity. I wonder what decisions led things astray. I dual boot elementary OS on my MacBook, and am always astonished by how much faster it is. I rarely boot into OS X anymore, and am no longer excited about the next release. For the record my main production distro is Bodhi, and my servers run Debian and FreeBSD on extremely thin hardware - yet run extremely well, albeit they are headless.

I know all that is only partially on topic, but they are still good talking points.

Re:OT rant

[jbolden]

10.6 wasn't a free upgrade. $20 is cheap it was during the time when Apple was lowering prices. They aren't defrauding anyone the prices on the upgrades are made public and haven't changed.

I have to say thought that is $20 bothers you, you aren't a good fit for Apple. You'll get hit far worse on other things. You will be much happier in the skinflint world of Linux or Windows.

Re:OT rant

[UnknowingFool]

My wife recently upgraded her iPhone to iOS7. Of course nobody* told her it requires iTunes 11 to run. But her laptop is an old one running on 10.5.something. And guess what, iTunes 11 won't install on anything less than 10.6.8 or so.

Um Leopard (10.5) was released 6 years ago and was last updated supported in 2009. So as a geek, you haven't updated your wife's machine in 4 years. That means that it was vulnerable to security holes and bugs for 4 years.

Of course an upgrade costs $20. So now a supposedly free upgrade is going to cost $20, or else my wife won't be able to get pictures and stuff off her phone. Luckily it's not a PPC, otherwise she'd be really screwed. Just missed that by a few months.

The upgrade for Leopard to Snow Leopard has always been $29. The fact that you avoided it for years does not mean that you should get it for free. Also the fact that Apple still supports it even though it is now 3 versions older than the current says that Apple still works with older products.

Re:OT rant

[sribe]

You need to remember that if Apple were to go back and offer the upgrade to 10.6.8 for free, the SEC would require them to re-starte their earnings for several years. Yes, I know what I'm talking about, and no, I'm not kidding. Since Apple has started to offer OS X upgrades for free, they are not allowed to count the full purchase price of Macs as income right away, but have to defer recognition of it until later years when the upgrades they're implicitly promising get delivered. Sigh.

Re:OT rant

[sribe]

...because (they claim - I don't know if this is true) their contract with Apple to allow distribution of their software through the app store prevents them from distributing installables any other way so they couldn't provide me with an installer for the earlier version.

Well, FYI, that is a bald-faced lie. They could send you the installer package any moment they decided to do so. (I am speaking as a business owner who distributes software through the Mac App Store.)