Apple Betas: Now the Public Has a Chance
July 8th, 2016When I wrote yesterday’s column, I really expected that Apple would wait until the next beta release of macOS Sierra and iOS 10 to make the public betas available. Well, they didn’t. They came out on July 7th, as hundreds of thousands of people were able to download prerelease versions of the two operating systems.
While these releases, which I presume are all or mostly the same as the second developer betas released earlier this week, are more robust and snappier than the original release, they are nothing to trifle with. The entire operation of your device depends on the OS doing its thing properly. If things go wrong, you can lose data, or, at the very least, find it difficult or impossible to do routine tasks.
At the very least, if you’re going to try a public beta, you should take precautions. Have a backup of your stuff, and try not to install macOS Sierra and iOS 10 on production gear. Some of my readers have older devices to test software on, so that they don’t have to worry if they have to wipe out their data and start over.
Now even if you already have OS X El Capitan or iOS 9 installed, that’s no guarantee that you’ll be able to run these betas.
So for macOS Sierra, you need the following:
iMac: Late 2009 or newer
MacBook: Late 2009 or newer
MacBook Air: Late 2010 or newer
MacBook Pro: Mid 2010 or newer
Mac mini: Mid 2010 or newer
Mac Pro: Mid 2010 or newer
That may seem restrictive when you consider that El Capitan worked on other Macs from 2007 through 2009. But it’s likely some of the new features, particularly Siri, aren’t compatible. At least all of my Macs, going back to a Mid 2010 17-inch MacBook Pro, will run macOS Sierra. Lucky me I suppose.
When it comes to iOS 10, the list is, again, more restrictive than iOS 9:
iPhone
- iPhone 6s & 6s Plus
- iPhone 6 & 6 Plus
- iPhone SE
- iPhone 5s
- iPhone 5c
- iPhone 5
iPad
- iPad Pro 12.9-inch
- iPad Pro 9.7-inch
- iPad Air 2
- iPad Air
- iPad 4th generation
- iPad mini 4
- iPad mini 3
- iPad mini 2
iPod
- iPod touch 6th generation
So my iPhones and my wife’s iPad will run just fine. My sister-in-law has a third generation iPad, which already drags with iOS 9. She is as far from a power user as you can get, so she will miss little or nothing in never being able to upgrade to a newer OS except for maintenance fixes for iOS 9, if there are any.
Now I suppose some Apple customers — and Apple critics — will attack Apple for the reduced lists of compatible hardware. It’s five or six years for macOS Sierra, and three years, more or less, for iOS gear. In the scheme of things, that’s a fairly wide list, and, other than the last couple of years, a more extensive list than Apple’s norm.
Still, there will be charges that Apple has restricted the list of gear that will run the new operating systems not to deliver a good user experience, but to force you to upgrade. On the surface, there may be a point to such complaints. After all, iPad sales are down, and it appears people are keeping their gear longer. So if suddenly forced to upgrade to continue to use the latest and greatest OS, perhaps they will be more inclined to buy new iPads. Maybe.
When it comes to iPhones, that’s not as clear-cut. Most people reportedly upgrade after two years, so getting an extra year of support for a new OS might not have as great an impact. Maybe.
Obviously your gear doesn’t suddenly stop working because the OS is outdated. If you like the way it works now, you can continue to use it that way. Most app developers will continue to offer backwards compatibility to a somewhat older OS release. At some point in time, that may change, but nobody forces you to stop using the app either because a new version is available.
It’s also true that, if you use the oldest compatible gear, it’s likely not going to perform the way you expect. Consider the plight of the iPhone 4s user who upgraded to iOS 9, or the iPad 3 user for that matter. Although it got better as maintenance updates appeared, performance was measurably slower than iOS 8.
Is that part of the great Apple plot to force you to buy new stuff, or just a symptom if adding features that require more CPU and graphics horsepower to work properly? Should Apple hold off developing new features because older gadgets can’t use them? That would seriously slow advancements in the platform. To be blunt, it’s illogical!
With Google the situation is considerably different. Due to rampant platform fragmentation, only a tiny percentage of devices can be updated to a new OS, ever. The most popular Android operating systems are two and three years old. Last year’s Android 6 Marshmallow still has a market share low enough to be in the “Other” category.
That said, it may be a little early for you to consider trying out the new public betas from Apple. Give them a little time unless you’re fully prepared to take chances, and fully prepared to deal with the consequences if things go bad. But the features are interesting enough that it’s worth a try if you observe the proper cautions.
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I had upgraded my 2009-2010 MacPro with the latest 6-core intel processor, 32 gb ram, usb 3.0 and a high end video card making my MacPro a version 5.1. Since it is still listed as a 2009 my computer is not on the list for the 10.12 software.
A MacOS Sierra Patcher Tool has been posted and is available for a highly skilled user. Hope my local MacMedia will be able to make the upgrade for me.
Understood. But you’ll want to be careful.
Peace,
Gene
If electronics were the only industry where this sort of thing happens, and if Apple were the only firm within the industry to do it, then critics would have a legitimate beef. But it’s not. Consider automobiles. There must be a limit on how far back in time dealership’s parts department will carry replacement parts for older models, and a second limit (probably longer) for how far back in time Ford will go in accepting responsibility for supplying spare parts even by special request. Same for washing machines, cameras, any product you are to name. True, technology probably advances at a faster rate for consumer electronics than for washing machines, but who’s going to blame Apple for that? As long as change is made for good reason and not just for change’s sake (which is normally not the case, although it may turn out that the iPhone 7 is a rare exception), I don’t hear a lot of people objecting but I do hear plenty of cheering. And of course you are free to get off the train any time you want and simply stick with what you have as long as it continues to work for you. My wife’s still happy with her G-5 Mac Pro.
Using the macOS Sierra Patcher.app along with the public beta of Sierra I was able to install Sierra on my 2009 MaPro.
Good luck with it. Don’t be shy about reporting your war stories.
Peace,
Gene
I don’t fault for Apple’s desire to move forward. Stagnation is a bad business plan. It is up to one’s choice whether or not to do an OS upgrade. It is better to base the upgrade on your needs knowing that to use a new OS feature may require new hardware.
One of my beloved Macs was a PowerBook G3 Series that had a useful life of over 10 years running the classic Mac OS. The performance was always snappy. In the end, it was able to do a lot of things except web browsing due to newer HTML standards. To use the newer Web services, I had to upgrade to a newer Mac, a PowerBook G4 that ended up hitting the upgrade wall at Mac OS X Tiger. Continuing web standard revisions, Apple moving more to Cloud services and a .Mac user meant another new Mac purchase on the horizon. That turned out to be my first Intel-based MacBook. It is still in use, over seven years old and still going strong.
Gene, My MacPro updated with MacOS 12.0 does not recognize WiFi. Since the Mac is connected to Ethernet I never noticed the lack of WiFi. MacBook and MacBookPro users will probably find this unexceptable.
Yes, it’s a beta. And things are not always going to work properly.
Peace,
Gene