9 votes

Are you using the latest Apple betas as your daily driver? How's it going?

I immediately installed iPadOS 17 Beta 1. Apart from quirks with saving images from the browser, it's been about as solid as the latest 16.x.x.

Anyone running the other betas as your daily drivers?

I'm also eager to hear from Sonora users. Considering updating my i7 Mac Mini.

4 comments

  1. hamstergeddon
    Link
    I'm using the iOS 17 beta on my iPhone 12 Pro Max and the only issue I've run into is that the keyboard doesn't always go away when it's supposed to in Messages. It just kind of lingers and covers...

    I'm using the iOS 17 beta on my iPhone 12 Pro Max and the only issue I've run into is that the keyboard doesn't always go away when it's supposed to in Messages. It just kind of lingers and covers up my messages until I back out of the app and go back in.

    Other than that though, everything's pretty rock-solid.

    4 votes
  2. onyxleopard
    Link
    I would caution that unless you actually are developing software for Apple’s platforms that you intend to test on the forthcoming releases, using betas as daily a driver just to get early access...

    I would caution that unless you actually are developing software for Apple’s platforms that you intend to test on the forthcoming releases, using betas as daily a driver just to get early access to software features is taking some risk. It’s relatively safe, but since it’s really not fully tested nor supported by Apple, you should definitely make sure to have a backup. I’ve had beta builds of macOS get into a bad state such that I had to do a full reinstall. I’ve known devs who had bad experience with beta iOS builds where some features like simply opening the Camera app would reproducibly cause a crash.

    Tl;dr Be careful with beta builds and make sure you have backups.

    2 votes
  3. ianw
    Link
    I’ve always jumped on the public betas as soon as they become available (iOS and iPadOS only) and have never run into what I would call “Breaking Changes”. There have definitely been some bugs...

    I’ve always jumped on the public betas as soon as they become available (iOS and iPadOS only) and have never run into what I would call “Breaking Changes”. There have definitely been some bugs here and there, but for me it’s worth it to get access to the latest stuff.

  4. jcrash
    Link
    Yes, I run iOS 17 beta on my iPhone 13 and the MacOS 14 beta on my M2 Air. I also use tvOS14 beta. So far I like all of them, I feel like this WWDC was bashed for not having huge iOS updates but I...

    Yes, I run iOS 17 beta on my iPhone 13 and the MacOS 14 beta on my M2 Air. I also use tvOS14 beta. So far I like all of them, I feel like this WWDC was bashed for not having huge iOS updates but I think some of the new features are really nice.

    On iOS I’m having some issues with apps crashing when click certain buttons, which was interesting. Not very widespread though. I’m also having the issue hamstergeddon is where my keyboard is not going away when I would like, messages especially. My AirPods were also not switching between my phone and computer as well as they were before but it’s not too big of an issue.

    Feature wise, I’m surprisingly using the display mode every day. I put my alarm clock away and am just using my phone now. It’s a really nice smart clock! It does have some quirks that I sent feedback about. The new FaceTime expressions are also cool, haven’t had any issues with them other than figuring out how to turn them on. Was getting an issue with screen sharing in presenter mode, but the person I was FaceTiming was not on the Beta so I didn’t feel like that was something to report.

    Really enjoying the betas so far!

    Edit: about Sonoma, the new desktop widgets are definitely the biggest change I’ve noticed, and they are really cool. Other than that nothing big has changed other than support for video wallpapers, but I have NOT been able to get that to work. The files never download for me. More than a couple apps don’t work with this OS as well, notably XCode. The safari profiles are cool, if you use that. Also available on iOS.